According to the author, this bridge cost five dollars, but I think that includes the whole box of matches. It seems to me the bridge uses about 3 dozen of them; a box holds a gross, so let's be generous and call it a third. If the box costs $2.49, that's 83 cents, and 17 cents' worth of Elmer's glue should be enough, so everything is nice and above board. Of course, I am leaving out the flex-track and paint, but many wood bridges were not painted, I guess, and if the flex-track is too expensive, perhaps you could call it a railroad bridge that isn't quite done yet.
The bridge is a freestyle creation. I wasn't following any particular prototype, but have seen pictures of very similar bridges, so I thought this one was close.
I went out and bought several different boxes/brands of those long 8-10 inch wooden matches used for lighting fireplaces and grills. Problem is that I can't remember which ones were the best now!
The first step was to cut the flammable heads off of them with some rail nippers. Next, I went through and sorted (threw out) about half of them because of either their gross deformity or their being more crooked than a dog's hind leg.
So, now I have the raw materials for the project. At this point, one could stain all of the material but I chose not to and painted the finished product instead.
The deck of the bridge is made up of the straightest match sticks I could find in the batch I had remaining. They were laid end to end and stacked in an L shape; two on the bottom and one on the side (Fig. 1). They were also laid out in such a way that the ends were never in the same place so that the finished beam was pretty strong (Fig. 2). These were then glued lengthwise. I made four of them; two for the top and two for the bottom. The top ones are about 1 1/2 inches longer than the bottom ones.
Next, after the beams had dried, I placed a piece of flextrack between the beams in such a way so that the ends of the ties fit in the inside of the L shape. This became the spacing for the top two rails. I cut cross pieces to properly space these rails and glued them about every two inches on the bottom of the beams. Leaving the flex track in place helped with the spacing a lot (Fig. 3).
I used the same precess for the bottom two beams but turned the beams so that the L was kind of upside down. Then I glued the spacers inside of the beam kind of like the ties were on top (Fig. 4). The end result is that you have two pieces that kind of look like ladders.
The next part was kind of hard, but if I did it again, I'd do it a bit different... I'd space the top and bottom about three inches apart. Center the bottom piece under the top one so that there is about 3/4" of the top sticking out on each end. Get a couple of scrap blocks of wood this thickness and use some tape to hold the top and bottom in place. Then, glue vertical spacers in place along both sides of the bridge, spacing them about two inches apart (Fig. 5).
After these have dried for at least a day, remove the blocks of wood then cut the diagonal braces to fit and put them in between the vertical spacers (Fig. 6). On the opposite side, I made the braces go the other way so that when you look through the bridge, you see an X pattern.
After everything is dry, a good coat of paint will give you a top-notch project. Staining won't work well now as the glue prevents the stain from going into the wood. The whole project only cost about $4-$5, primarily for the match sticks. (See my note above, however - Ed.)
