Local stagecoach headed to nat'l museum

WARSAW, IND. (WANE) - Back in October, NewsChannel 15 introduced you to a life-size stagecoach made out of 1.5 million toothpicks. Now, a new owner is about to take the reigns!

Warsaw’s Terry Woodling, or “Mr. Toothpick”, spent 15 years making that creation, which is about to go to a museum for thousands to see.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not recently contacted Woodling, and bought the piece to place in one of its museums.

Ripley's executives came to Warsaw on Tuesday, November 24, to pick up the Stagecoach, and take it to Orlando. It'll have to be broken down to nearly 50 pieces to make that happen

Original wane.com story from October 25, 2009:

A real-life stagecoach built in Warsaw could soon be seen on display in a museum, not because of its historic nature, but because of what it's made with.

It may look like a typical stagecoach just waiting for a horse to come pull it along, but that's far from the case. The stagecoach is made exclusively out of toothpicks -- and an awful lot of glue!

Terry Woodling, 72, has been making things from toothpicks since 1981 and got his latest idea after seeing a miniature replica for sale.

"I started with the wheels first," Woodling said. That, he says, was the easy part.
"It's a little more than a toothpick in length,” he said when describing the width of part of the wheel.

It's taken a lot of those little guys: 1.5 million toothpicks to be exact.

It hasn't been cheap, either. That's because Woodling estimates he's spent more than $1,200 in toothpicks alone.

He keeps the receipts taped to the wall in his garage work room as a reminder. He bought more than 240 packages of flat -- not round -- toothpicks at a local Owen’s grocery story back in May of 2007, and spent more than $150 on that trip.

The Warsaw resident -- also known as "Mr. Toothpick" -- started the Stagecoach project back on Thanksgiving of 1994. This year, he'll give thanks for being done, as will his wife.

"She's been real helpful putting up with the new dictionary I've come up with when something goes wrong," Woodling laughed.
And there have been a few bumps in the road.

"I had a hoist in the ceiling, and I had the stagecoach lifted up and was going to move it and then the hoist pulled out of the ceiling, and this thing came crashing down and I thought oh man that's going to be the end of that," Woodling laughed.

But it wasn’t. The roughly 250 pound stage coach suffered only minor damage. Now, 15 years and lots of work later, a parking break still under construction will be the finishing touch. And Woodling says it will be his last toothpick masterpiece.

"If there is another, I'm out of my mind," Woodling joked.

Terry hopes to donate the stagecoach to a museum. He already has a handful of pieces at museums around the state, like the Elkhart Railroad Museum and the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis.