So, last year a random old guy in rural WI gave me all his drone stuff. Said he'd had his fun and was moving on from the hobby. He literallly filled my SUV to the roof with drones and boxes of parts. Twice. And his thing was heavy lift. It's all about 10 years old, so I probably wont use the ESC's or FC's, but still got a ton of goodies. There's at least $2k just in unopened CF props. Anyway, I'm taking a crashed X and an unfinished hex and making a big X8 that I'm hoping will freestyle. Today I took both drones apart and started roughing out the build. To give a sense of scale, the props pictured are 16". I'll make my own Li-Ion packs using 21700 cells, probably in a 6s4p config.
Biggest I've built before is 5" and never an X8, so this is completely new territory for me. I have a lightly used SpeedyBee F7 FC that'll do bidirectional dshot and rpm filtering on all 8 motors, so I think all I'll have to buy for the build is a pair of 4in1 escs and a sheet of carbon to cut a new top plate.
Wish me luck and drop a comment if you have any experience to share!

update 5/8: added batteries, but I'm running QS8 antispark connectors because the batteries are also used in my rc boats and cars