Fawn Lake and Kamloops resident Dean (Bud) Bolivar, 85, started building some very intricate and beautiful model structures, using his past experience gained while building radio-controlled model airplanes made of balsa wood.
"Used to pile them up as fast as he built them."
Bud began building these intricate structures when a neighbour came home from a garage sale with a partially completed airplane project that someone had started.
She gave it to him and Bud says he began to look through the kit. He couldn't understand how it would hold with the ordinary wood glue that was provided in the kit, so he found a better way of doing it.
That experience led to his current hobby, which some would call a passion for building intricate wooden models of famous architecture.
Eventually, he found the pattern for the stunning wooden replica of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was in a kit, designed by Matchitecture.
While he only wanted the pattern, Bud had to purchase the entire kit, he grumbles in a good-natured manner.
Match sticks came in the kit, but Bud says he preferred to re-cut all the pieces and do the pattern with balsa wood. So, he purchased 1/8- by 1/8-inch stock, and 1/8- by 1/4-inch stock that came in 36-inch lengths.
When he bought the kit, it came with 7,000 match stick pieces and they are 1/8- by 1/8- by 2 1/8 inches long, but all he wanted was the pattern plans. "I have over 10,000 match sticks available for anyone who wishes to buy them," he says with a chuckle.
The plans came on standard sized 8 ½- by 11-inch sheets of paper and there were 105 pages of them in the kit, he notes.
Bud takes a Styrofoam board which he attaches the pieces of wood to with T pins, in preparation for assembly and then he numbers them all. He says sometimes there are five or six different pieces on a plan.
Then all the individual pieces are glued together and numbered.
There is then an additional plan on how to do the final assembly of the cathedral, he explains. Then he glues all the assembled pieces together.
Bud used a cyano acetate (CA) glue when he built his radio-controlled planes, so he is familiar with its use. It is a fast-setting glue, which comes in thin, medium and fill consistency, and uses the odourless version now.
He puts a couple of drops on the balsa wood and the glue sets in a few seconds.
He figured the glue that came in the kit was traditional wood glue and would take a lot longer to set, making it more difficult for assembly.
Bud slides the plan assembly pages into acid-free page protector sleeves that the CA glue will not adhere to, and it will only stick to the wood.
Bud says he didn't work on the cathedral project steadily, as he spent time on it for eight months and approximately 50 hours each month.
Notre Dame Cathedral is not his only project, as he has completed a half dozen other ones that adorn his and his wife, Leona's (Lee), home.
They include a Mississippi steam paddle-wheeler, an airplane, a three-wing aircraft and a locomotive.