This Is Forrest

I’m 28 years old and based in Shepparton, Victoria and have been here my length of life so far. It’s a good industrial town, with a large amount of trade-based work, farming and car culture. My father is a diesel mechanic, and my mother works at Woolworths as a cashier. I was a very inquisitive kid from a young age, I loved fixing things, digging, making Lego and as I grew up became fascinated with cars and all things fabrication. I first began welding at the age of 12 at my father’s workplace which was a truck mechanic shop. It was here that I used to sweep floors for $10 each night, I was introduced to the concept of welding during these after work hours.

Once I learnt I could join steel together I spent a large amount of time there making all sorts of scrap metal contraptions. When I couldn’t be there, I would drag my grandfather’s arc welder out of dads shed, blow the dust off it and would create anything that came to mind.

For me this is where my journey began, and it has been a lot of hard work since.

Starting high school and throughout, I knew the path I wanted to pursue was fabrication. Unlike a lot of my friends, we only had a small single garage and lived in town. The shed wasn’t created around the ability to fabricate or build things, instead catered for chatting shit with mates and playing Xbox within a cozy mancave setting.

This lit the fire inside me from a young age and it became my goal to one day have my own shed, full of tools and equipment that could allow me to have a place to learn and build anything I wanted, for anyone, on my own terms.
The frustration of this as a creative teen who hated school was intense. I knew I needed to get my education for my path in fabrication, and I did, but I counted every day that past from the first day of year 7. 

So why forrest?

During year 11 and 12 of high school I began my VCE studies, and opted to do a VET class as well, which allowed me to do trade school cert 1 and 2 in engineering/metal fabrication practices. This was a huge workload, and my best friends Dad started calling me Forrest, he used to tell me for a smart kid I could be a real dumbass sometimes, but he also admired how hard I was working, and my drive to not stop during the hardest of times which I frequently pushed my own abilities.


I finished high school in 2014, only a few weeks after I began my boiler making/fabrication apprenticeship.

A year or two later around 2016 my parents separated, leading up to this period I still had the fire burning inside me, I saved money for tools, was doing my apprenticeship as well as working at a supermarket throughout the week and every weekend.

 I took me 3 years from 2016 to 2019, and a lot of hard earnt money and late nights.

Forrest Fab truly came to life several years ago and

was projected to the community through my YouTube channel. With 5100 subscribers this channel began in 2014 under the name JScrivensFilms. The channel sat until 2018, it was at this point that my                                                                                workshop was established enough                                                                            to be able to film my fabrication content, which brought the channel back named as Forrest Fabrications. This was then shortened to Forrest Fab. The original concept of what I wanted Forrest Fab to be at this point of time was unclear, I was working part time at the supermarket, doing my apprenticeship and working on my own stuff in the meantime. During this period of time the dream was to grow the YouTube channel to a point it could sustain a living wage, and I was driven to make YouTube a career. I worked hard on YouTube but the harder I went on it the harder it went on me. I found myself focusing more on trying to create content, than actually enjoying the fabrication process and taking the time to learn and grow as a fabricator.

I finished my apprenticeship in December 2018. It’s an unwritten courtesy to give your employer 4 years back in return, this was my plan.

 My 5^th (2019) and 6^th (2020) year went okay, but the company started shifting to a more repetitious business model, I worked less on the complicated engineering and repair jobs I enjoyed, and was instead doing huge batch runs of the same parts, on the weekly. Amongst working I was still trying to hit it big on YouTube with Forrest Fab.

During this period of time, we sold the family home as my mum shifted to Melbourne with her new partner. We came up with a deal that I would find a house for her to invest in, assist with funds for a new loan and rent the property from her. 

This was the foundation of the V2 shed for Forrest Fab, with more space and more potential.

It led to the creation of my Instagram account on the 30/12/2019. I wanted to use this to assist the growth of the YouTube channel. From 2020-2021 I dedicated myself to Forrest Fab and worked hard on my social media presence as well as completing my own fabrication work and jobs. The idea was that I could make money doing the job as well as double down with the revenue from social media.
I was beginning to burnout, I didn’t physically have enough time. This led me to approach my bosses in my 7^th year there, we came to an agreement that they would allow me to do 4-day weeks, to give me the time to follow my passion. After a year of waiting and constant broken promises from someone I had worked extremely hard for, I realised and confirmed they weren’t willing to work with me, and I felt like a fool for thinking my loyalty would be rewarded with such an opportunity.




August 2021, I pulled the pin on YouTube with my last video as I had experimented with it enough that I realised it was shifting who I was. I was more focused on content, I didn’t have the time to build on my skills, and for someone who enjoys producing high quality work I realized this wasn’t the correct path for Forrest Fab.

As the end of 2021 neared, I decided I would leave my engineering job. But not before I would set myself up to run Forrest Fab from home. I decided I would invest in extending my shed, a car hoist, and everything else I needed. For 12 months I worked on the shed every day, and by the end of 2022 this was Forrest Fab’s new home.

During this process I shared my work on Instagram as it was a less demanding and a more loyal level of following. Throughout the renovation process I received nothing but positive feedback. I enjoy sharing what I create as the positive influence is clearly shown through messages I regularly receive, from all kinds of people. Which honestly at times keeps me going.

I quit my Engineering job on the 21/12/2022. And I started full-time nightfall at a supermarket to further gain time and to focus on Forrest Fab during the day.
At this point of time I was doing a lot of general fabrication jobs, building benches, on site work fixing gates, and anything in-between.

This wasn’t my intended path, but I needed money to fund its growth. The direction I was working towards and had always dreamed of submersing Forrest Fab within is performance car fabrication, 3d design engineering, printing and scanning. These are my true passions.

At the start of 2023 I was far from being anywhere near that goal. Only a few months into pursuing my business heavily, my relationship of 6 years ate shit, I found out my mum had breast cancer the following day, 2 weeks from that the supermarket I work at decided to cut penalty hours with night fill so I had to find a second job over night, 2 months from then my most business orientated friend passed in a car crash, then in the same week I had the local council come around to shut down me, they stopped me working at home despite my respect and courtesy to my neighbors with noise.

The year 2023 taught me a lot. And honestly not to stop,

Since March 2023 I returned to being a boilermaker at a truck insurance repair company casually, I balanced that with night fill and ran 16 hours days, this gave me the funds to get myself into an industrial rental shed during September 2023. This meant no noise restrictions, no time limit and the ability to work comfortably as Forrest Fab.   

This process has taught me that your own business is a tricky task, but transitioning into a field that’s more complex then what you are already within is extremely hard. I didn’t want to work within general fab and hadn’t for a long time, so it gets to a point where you have to say no to the usual work, all whilst learning and proving you can undertake the work within the field you wish to be doing.
That field for me is the use of computer assisted design (CAD), 3d scanning and 3d printing.

Unfortunately, the downside of CAD is that it is very intricate, and involves investing a huge amount of time to learn, when pairing it with the use of 3d scans it gets further complex. On top of this the computer power needed is expensive, as is the scanning and printing equipment.

This for a long time has been my main pursuit, I have defined my path from the failures, losses and frustrations during my time spent with general fabrication. Despite the pain of having to do jobs I hated, it gave me the funds and knowledge needed for the next move.
Over the past 12 months I have worked extremely hard to become proficient in 3d design, I have invested money into computing systems, a 3d printer. I have also invested in my own entry level 3d scanner, so I can begin working my way towards such level of equipment for myself. Below are some demonstrations of my work using the discussed methods above.

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a lot of pain, but I got here after many years.

My main reason for taking Forrest Fab down this avenue is that CAD and the methods pictured above bring an entirely new dimension to your business.

The communication benefits of 3d design are one of the main reasons I always wanted to get to this point, the fact you can create a client's idea before it’s a real item allows the product to become perfect the first time, instead of constant re-work when they aren’t able to visualize it the same as you or vice versa.
Communication also ties into outsourcing work, having precise drawings means you can easily work with others, even at an international level. I found that it was necessary to go down this path to be able to scale my business and easily work with others along the way.

Operating with others is why I appreciate cad software's so greatly. It allows the manufacturing of goods to become limitless and turns complex tasks into much more manageable steps.
I'm stoked that after all these years I can finally sit down and begin the process of manufacturing innovative performance parts, tools, and some cool merchandise for you all. Everything sold helps me re-invest into what I'm capable of creating and learning, so I can come back to you all with better products and knowledge to share.
Thanks again all!!

Welcoming ForrestFab.com

I hope you have enjoyed the read.

Kind regards, Jayden Scrivens FF

And a special thanks to my friends, family and companies that have helped me with this journey. Much appreciated! 
Stay tunnnneeeeeddddd.