Allow me to let you in on a little secret: Unless you're doing a straight, out-of-the-box build (and even then sometimes) it's all trial and error and experimenting. There are a few "tried and true" techniques for scratchbuilding, but almost every modeler I know has his/her own way of doing things, none of which are either right or wrong.Thanks for the kind words guys. I really don't consider myself as having any model building skills. This is all trial and error for me with some experimenting thrown in.
Absolutely; practice and experience are the best teachers. I've been building models more than 40 years now, and I still don't feel I've gotten it completely right on any one of my builds. But at the same time, the moment I stop learning from it or it stops being challenging in some way is the moment I'll stop doing it because it'll then become routine and boring.For something like this, I think skill comes with experience and learning so it would be important to just start building something while challenging yourself at the same time.
I couldn't find any tubing small enough for the hydraulics so for now I'm using battleship cannons.