Steel excavator build

[73blueblazer]

Hi everyone, my names Justin alittle about me I'm 29 live in michigan and I work as a draftsman so I have lots of mechanical experience. So I've been following everyone's post for the last year and a half and I'm finally ready to build my own excavator. I started with a plastic FastLane toy for my pattern but I realized that's not what I want so I found a cad file of a excavator and scaled it to around 1:14 scale. Then I started with a sheet of 22ga steel but I'm thinking it might be too thin. What is a good gauge of steel to use 20ga or 16ga? I want to tack weld it together and braze the seams together. Polly just use k1 links for tracks and rc4wd for hydraulic components until I can afford to get autocad and out source my machining to my uncle. I also bought a Big Farm dump truck I plan on converting or building from scratch later on. Do you have any recommendation for my excavator build? I will post pics of progress soon as I figure out how to.