Ivan Seeking
Feb12-10, 03:16 PM
Jack Hall from Brighton, England, couldn't pick, strum, or draw a bow, but when it came to building stringed instruments, he had an amazing talent. You see, every inch of the instruments he built is made entirely with used matchsticks. Yes, dead matches.
Jack a seaman in the Merchant Navy, conceived the idea out of boredom. In the 1930s, he served as a deck-hand on the American owned tramp steamer Eastwick. Daily routine in those days was monotonous and during the long off-watch hours there was literally nothing to do, as Jack explained, "You had to make your own amusement or you either went mad or melancholy."
With a natural sense of tidiness, Jack picked up matchsticks from around the ship discarded by his fellow crewmen. Then, sitting at the small mess table, he idly passed the time laying them out into various patterns, when the thought struck him that enough of them, glued together, would make a board that could be put to some useful purpose. He contrived a glue pot (an empty tobacco tin and an oldsaucepan from the ship's galley) and, with carpenter's glue and a small collection of used matchsticks, built his first layer of timber. ...
http://www.ibluegrass.com/images/matchless/match_guitar_in_case_small.jpg
http://www.ibluegrass.com/bg_posting3.CFM?p__i=641&p__r=&p__a=match
Jack a seaman in the Merchant Navy, conceived the idea out of boredom. In the 1930s, he served as a deck-hand on the American owned tramp steamer Eastwick. Daily routine in those days was monotonous and during the long off-watch hours there was literally nothing to do, as Jack explained, "You had to make your own amusement or you either went mad or melancholy."
With a natural sense of tidiness, Jack picked up matchsticks from around the ship discarded by his fellow crewmen. Then, sitting at the small mess table, he idly passed the time laying them out into various patterns, when the thought struck him that enough of them, glued together, would make a board that could be put to some useful purpose. He contrived a glue pot (an empty tobacco tin and an oldsaucepan from the ship's galley) and, with carpenter's glue and a small collection of used matchsticks, built his first layer of timber. ...
http://www.ibluegrass.com/images/matchless/match_guitar_in_case_small.jpg
http://www.ibluegrass.com/bg_posting3.CFM?p__i=641&p__r=&p__a=match