Dec 9, 2009: Stagecoach

[xoxoxoBruce]

Looks like a well preserved example, of an old Wells Fargo stagecoach.



But it ain't.

It may look like a typical stagecoach just waiting for a horse to come pull it along, but that's far from the case. The stagecoach is made exclusively out of toothpicks -- and an awful lot of glue!
Terry Woodling, 72, has been making things from toothpicks since 1981 and got his latest idea after seeing a miniature replica for sale. "I started with the wheels first," Woodling said. That, he says, was the easy part. "It's a little more than a toothpick in length,” he said when describing the width of part of the wheel. It's taken a lot of those little guys: 1.5 million toothpicks to be exact.
It hasn't been cheap, either. That's because Woodling estimates he's spent more than $1,200 in toothpicks alone.

1.5 million! No wonder it took him 15 years.

Terry hopes to donate the stagecoach to a museum. He already has a handful of pieces at museums around the state, like the Elkhart Railroad Museum and the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis. Woodling submitted his pieces to the Guinness Book of World Records, but found out it didn’t qualify since it was made with glue.

What, they have a category for stagecoaches made of 1.5 million toothpicks and no glue? I don't get it?


link