Thanks so much everybody. Just a quick update to show my model so far. It really sped up once the weird joint was figured out. It's still not accurate and I'm making tons of mistakes, but I did manage to build something. This is a WIP and will be working on more daily modeling to get more familiar with the process.

@Karsten - this looks awesome, thank you so much, will check the file out as soon as I get back home. Very helpful to have the step by step and the file, thank you for all the help and effort!