Alchemy's Workbench #4: Just Scratching The Surface

Not going to happen. At least not anytime soon.

Getting an early morning in today gave me just the opportunity that I was looking for to hit the drawing board and, to start prototyping my scratch build projects. It's been quite a learning experience.

The first thing that I have learned that is no matter how cool I may think David Gaffam's papercraft model is, it probably isn't going to happen with Balsa Wood.

At least not anytime soon.

This is pretty much down to the second lesson that I have learned today, which is to play to the strengths of your chosen material. Balsa Wood doesn't handle cutting curves into it too well at all, so the arches in David's model are a definite no go for someone as new to scratch building as me, even with an experienced hand to guide me.

This has lead to some interesting compromises from a design point of view, as a lot of science-fiction architecture tends to be curve heavy. It has also lead to what I thought would be a ruins construction project going in a completely unexpected direction, with what I have on the drawing board now resembling something better described as an Imperial barracks.

All this has inspired a number of other ideas that I already had swilling around as well as sparking a new one. That's about as far as I've got so far (well apart from a card mock-up of some of my ideas) but, I have to say that I think I am coming along great guns!