If you've done wood working before, then you have a good start. The most important thing in scratch building is learning to be patient. You have to know when to slow down and pay close attention. Accuracy is very important, and that comes from experience and patients. You will make mistakes, so learn from them and don't get discouraged when something doesn't go right. Just step back, reevaluate the situation, develop a plan to move forward and keep plugging away at it.

If you buy your wood in bulk then the cost is not that expensive, and much less generally than a kit. Where you will see the expense rise is the hardware, and this is because you can select what you want. You'll find you end up getting the higher end hardware a kit won't come close to matching.

In some respects, scratch building is easier than a kit since you control all the quality of materials, hardware and parts fit your self. You generally (at least I do) make your own kit by cutting out all the wood parts before hand and building up sub-kits: wing, fuselage and empenage. From there it's just like building a regular kit. But in the end you'll have a lot more pride and there is nothing like seeing a model you cut all the pieces out and built your self take flight for the first time.

Go spend some time in the kit built and scratch built forums. There is wealth of information to be learned there which will greatly help avoiding some mistakes.

Hogflyer