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Author Topic: another matchstick model - Titanic  (Read 8462 times)

DavieTait

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another matchstick model - Titanic
« on: January 30, 2012, 11:48:54 pm »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093448/At-float-Retired-seaman-creates-remarkable-replica-Titanic-using-120-000-matchsticks.html

At least it will float! Retired seaman creates remarkable replica of Titanic using 120,000 matchsticks

A retired seafarer has created a remarkable model of the Titanic using more than 120,000 matchsticks in time for the centenary of her sinking.

David Reynolds, 53, spent more than six painstaking months recreating the world's most famous liner from the original design.

The 5ft long model of the doomed passenger liner features stunning detail including cabins, propellers, funnels and the rigging.


Painstaking: David Reynolds used more 120,000 matchsticks to create the 5ft scale model of the Titanic

David, who is already in the Guinness Book of Records for his matchstick modelling marvels, cut, glued and slotted the matchsticks using eight pots of glue and five scalpel blades.

If each stick was laid down end to end it would stretch to three miles long - the length of Southampton Water - from where she steamed out of on her maiden voyage.

David, a retired merchant navy sailor, now hopes his creation will be berthed in Southampton's Sea City being opened in March, a museum celebrating the city's connection with the sea.

The 1:700 scale model could become the showpiece for the Titanic exhibition.


Minute detail: The amazing model of the doomed passenger liner has perfectly recreated features including cabins, propellers, funnels and the rudder

Model marvel: David cut, glued and slotted the matchsticks using eight pots of glue and five scalpel blades

Labour of love: David spent 1,700 hours and used matches worth around £1,200 to create to ship down to every last detail including the correct number of lifeboats - 20 - on the original liner during its fateful maiden voyage

The father-of-one from Southampton, Hants, said: ‘I have done a smaller one but for the anniversary I decided to go large to show off more detail.’

The plans he created for his model follow the original designs and mirrors the construction of the Titanic at Harland and Woolf shipyard in Belfast.

The sculpture took 1,700 hours to build and cost 50 pounds using headless matches. If boxed matches were used it would have cost £1,200.

It even features the same amount of lifeboats carried by the liner - 20 - which were famously only enough to hold a third of the ship's capacity, resulting in the loss of unnecessary lives.

David added: ‘I built the keel all out of matches, then I put on the ribs and frame and then built the ship from there.

‘Each funnel has about 100 matches. I would have built it bigger but I might not be able to fit it in my car.


Stunning: David hopes the model will find pride of place at Southampton's Sea City, a museum celebrating the area's link to the sea

‘The most difficult parts were the stern and bow because they are curved it involves bending the matches.

‘The model is watertight and actually floats but doesn't have a motor so I wouldn't take it on the water.

‘My son Mark thinks I'm sad for doing it but it gives me something to do in the evenings and it's better than sitting in front of the TV.’

The Titanic sunk in the early hours of 15 April, 1912, after hitting an iceberg four days into a crossing to New York.

The disaster resulted in the death of 1,517 people.

Although the model is impressive it is dwarfed in size by David's gigantic scale model of an oil rig with which he broke the record for the world's biggest matchstick model.

At 21ft long, 12ft wide and 7ft high it was so large it took David 15 years to finish and used some 4.1million matchsticks.

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DickyD

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Re: another matchstick model - Oil rig
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2012, 12:12:46 am »

It is made up of more than four million matches, weighs half a ton and took 15 years to build.

Former oil rig worker David Reynolds has built a replica of a North Sea oil platform completely out of a matchsticks.

The model was so massive that it could not be assembled in one piece at the Reynolds’ home in Swaythling, Southampton.

So the 14 sections were taken in two lorries to the Bursledon Brickworks and Industrial Museum where the 21ft x 12ft x 7ft model has been given a temporary home.

Now 51-year-old David is hoping to strike up a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

David says: “I am told that the current record [for a model] is 3.5 million matches. So fingers crossed. Now I have to await the adjudication.”

It was his son Mark who inspired his marathon effort.

David said: “My son bought me a small matchstick kit of a model train which I built within a few weeks.

“Then he suggested that I should build a tanker or an oil rig. I decided to build a small oil rig similar to the one that I worked on for five years.

“Then I started on the large rigs and got a bit carried away. Once I started I just had to finish it.”

His experience of working on the rigs and as a maintenance technician at Esso in Fawley were channelled into creating the masterpiece, which he has called the Cathedrals of the Sea.

It is based on the famous and controversial Brent Bravo – one of the four oil platforms in the UK northern section.

David used every spare minute and burned the midnight oil as he fashioned and polished each of the four million matchsticks to build the replica.

Everything is built to the finest detail, including the accommodation block for the rig workers, the flotilla of ships moored to the rig, the platforms and towers.

David used his living room and conservatory to build the sections and the finished work was stored in his sheds and loft.

He said: “Earlier this year I thought about destroying it because I wanted the space in my sheds. My wife Julie said it would be criminal not to put it on display after all the years of hard work I had put in.

“Fortunately the brickworks museum said they would display it for me.”

He gathered used matches from work colleagues but his main source was from a wholesaler, dramatically trimming the cost.

David said: “If I had bought all those matches from the cornershop it would have cost me about £46,000. It actually cost me £1,600, which works out at about £100 a year.”
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funtimefrankie

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Re: another matchstick model - Titanic
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2012, 10:44:16 am »

1:175 scale not 1:700  :police:
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