Wood Creations and Other Concoctions

Colin Webb of Taunton, Somerset, England, once saw a wooden model toy in a store and decided he could do it better. And he proved it by building a life size Harley Davidson motorcycle made of recycled plywood. Except for the wheel spokes, it’s complete with moving parts. He got the idea while working at a recycling plant where plywood was dumped in a landfill.

His 100 kg bike took 900 hours, 82 sq ft of wood, five liters of glue and four liters of varnish to complete. The craftsman, who loves to tinker rebuilding car engines and gearboxes, has made other wooden creations including another smaller bike and a weather vane. Another full size Formula 1 was built in Singapore out of a variety of breads by chefs of the Royal Plaza’s Scotts Hotel. It took a total of 14 liters of water, 15 kg of yeast, 2 kg of salt, 10800 ml of food varnish and 549 hours of to complete. Talk about your fast food…

However, Webb isn’t the only one with an obsession for making vehicles out of wood. How about a full size car made entirely out of matchsticks? Michael Arndt of Germany built a full-scale replica of a McLaren 4/14 F1 Mercedes Formula 1 racing car out of them. The project took over six years, 956,000 matchsticks and 1686 tubes of glue. The cost was around 6000 Euros. The huge model takes up most of his kitchen. It can be broken down into 45 parts for easy reassembly at various matchstick-builders conventions.

Patrick Action of Gladbrook, Iowa, is considered one of the best matchstick model builders in the world. Many of his works have been purchased by “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” museums. Acton has constructed so many models of buildings, ships, animals and people his community built a museum for his work.

For more information on matchstick model building go to:http://jy3502.hubpages.com/hub/Building-Matchstick-Models