The Matchstick Project
This is a working notebook. I build small models out of matchsticks and craft splints, and these are the notes I kept wishing I had written down the first time round — what glue actually holds, why a beam sags, how to cut two hundred identical pieces without losing your mind.
Nothing here is a kit review and there are no plans to download. Matchstick modelling is slow, cheap and almost entirely about patience, so most of what matters is technique rather than materials. The pages below are organised the way I actually reach for them.
Materials
Matchsticks against craft splints, PVA against cyanoacrylate, and what to use for formers and baseboards.
Techniques
Cutting jigs, lamination, box beams, bracing, curves, and keeping a large model flat.
Build log
Dated entries from whatever is currently on the board, with stick counts and hours.
Currently on the board
A three-span through-truss bridge, 940 mm over all, built to no particular prototype. The deck is done and the first span is standing; the second is waiting on a new cutting jig because my old one had drifted about half a millimetre and every diagonal came out short. Running total is somewhere near nine thousand sticks.
If you are starting out
Three things would have saved me a year. Buy matchsticks without heads — de-heading several thousand matches by hand is a miserable way to spend a fortnight. Build a cutting jig before you cut anything, and check it against a steel rule every hundred pieces. And use white PVA rather than superglue for structure: it is slower, which feels like a disadvantage until the first time you need to take a joint apart.