It's amazing what you can learn when you browse through the forums at Plamo and ZeroG. One thing which really fascinated me was the scratch building done by the sifus there. This was basically building something... out of nothing; i.e. building parts from scratch. To do so, you need an idea, pla-plates (styrene sheets), art knife/scissors, glue, sandpaper and a lot of patience.

I've never done any scratch building before, so basically this is a time where I can experiment and try out new things. First thing, I need to know what I want to make. I was thinking of trying something simple first, so why not a new gun for my Sinanju. Took a few minutes to come out with a very crude sketch of the gun.

This was done so that I have a rough reference of how to build the damn thing. The design will no doubt change as I go along. Next, I need some pla-plates to build the gun. Unfortunately, the ones available at Robot Master comes at a artery severing price of RM35 a pack. That's daylight robbery even for plain sheets of plastic. Bandai is the Devil I tell u.

So I needed to find something which could double up as pla-plates.

Then I thought of this thing :

A quick trim using my kitchen scissors, and I ended up with a flat sheet of plastic.

From here on, it's basically trial and error. Cutting the plastic sheets down to size.

For the barrels of the gun, I saw some cotton buds in my house, which I think is just the perfect size.

After plenty of cutting, drilling and glued fingers (you won't believe how hard crazy glue bonds to naked skin) I came out with this. Which was an utter failure as everything was misaligned and bent out of shape. The barrel was too short as well.

A second try yielded a slightly better result.

Very crude, but at least it looks slightly similar to what I had in mind.

For the main body of the gun, I thought of using the transparent casing which holds solder wire. Which turn out to be a rather good fit.

I stopped at this point. There's still a long way to go, but it's a damn good learning experience. I salute the gunpla sifus who made scratch building look so simple. It's tough as hell... period.