About the Artist

Patrick, with his largest matchstick creation requiring over one million sticks to build. The steampunk flying locomotive Plane Loco was contracted by Ripley’s Believe It or Not in 2015.

Background

Patrick Acton was born in Greene County, Iowa, and raised on his family’s farm near Rippey. After graduating from the University of Northern Iowa in 1977, he moved to Gladbrook, Iowa, with his wife April, and began experimenting with matchstick models as a hobby. In 2012 he retired after nearly three decades as a professional career counselor at the community college district in Marshalltown. He is now self-employed as an artist, making matchstick models full time. Patrick has been producing these models for 5 decades, many of these built for Ripley’s Believe It of Not Entertainment Inc.

Childhood Building Projects

Acton has enjoyed working with wood and tinkering with mechanical things since childhood.  When he was ten, his father bought him a new bicycle. He had it for only two weeks before he cut up the frame and installed a lawn mower engine. Acton would effortlessly breeze along on his “motor” bike over the hills of west central Iowa’s gravel roads.  He also built a fully-enclosed tree house, complete with glass windows, painted siding, and heating stove.  Another childhood project included salvaging an abandoned Ford Model T truck from a cow pasture and restoring it to running condition. Acton remembers that he was often in trouble for not returning tools to their proper place on the farm.  He learned many woodworking and mechanical skills as a youth by trial and error.

Matchstick Model Building

As a child, Acton saw a television news story about a man who fashioned a small diorama of his Iowa farmstead from ordinary wooden matchsticks.  Although he never forgot about this interesting story, it wasn’t until years later that he attempted building with matchsticks.

Then in 1977, fresh out of college with no woodworking tools of his own, Acton built a small model of a country church. He used Ohio Blue Tip matches purchased at the grocery store, a bottle of school glue, a utility knife, and a piece of sandpaper.  Soon after that he challenged himself by building a matchstick model of a ship, the frigate USS Constitution. His wintertime hobby became a passion.

After nearly ten years of model building and cutting the heads off more than 70,000 matchsticks by hand, Acton contacted the Ohio Blue Tip Company and learned matchsticks could be purchased without the sulfur tip. After this discovery, Acton was able to work much faster, increasing the size of his models from inches to feet and from hundreds of matchsticks to thousands.

In 1994 Ripley’s Believe It or Not began purchasing models from Acton. By then he had established a fully-equipped woodworking shop in his home and was spending hundreds of hours each winter building models.

Matchsticking Techniques

Over the years Acton has developed many techniques and processes that have allowed him to make more complex and detailed models.

Originally, Acton built structures with straight sides. After years of cutting single matchsticks into many pieces to form curves and shapes, he discovered that he could crimp and bend individual matchsticks into curved shapes using needle-nosed pliers. No water or steam is used to bend the sticks.  Once the curved stick is glued in place, it can be lightly sanded with no noticeable trace of damage to the matchstick. This technique was discovered while shaping sticks to build his model of Pinocchio.

Another technique Acton developed is sheet-building. After thousands of matchsticks are glued together on a base of Plexiglas, the glue is allowed to dry for a few days. Then this matchstick board can be peeled away from the sheet of acrylic. These large flat sheets of matchsticks, similar to thin pieces of plywood or wood veneer, are used for various model interior framing and substructures.

Although his techniques for building models have improved, the basic process has remained the same; that is, gluing one stick at a time.

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Matchstick Marvels, 319 2nd Street, Gladbrook, IA