One of the most intricate pieces of work on the entire model are the ornamental iron gates. There are seven of these, and each required more than a day’s labor. Each picket is a separate piece of wood, and there are ornamental hinges and locks.
Van Zandt says the most difficult work on the whole model was the fitting of the small gratings in the basement windows. The pieces composing the gratings are so small that it was almost impossible to get them glued into position. The glue set before the pieces could be put in place.
Van Zandt solved this problem by specially prepared glue to be used in this work so that it would not set so quickly. It required more than a day’s time for each of the four gratings.
The first part of the house completed, he says, was one of the small windows which project from the roof above the second story, and the last thing completed was the knob on one of the gates.
Van Zandt is emphatic in his statement that the only tool used in the entire work was his penknife. Even the rounded pillars in the porches, he says, were made with the knife and were smoothed with a piece of sandpaper.
In 1913 he completed a model of the Centenary Church, Sixteenth and Pine Streets, on which he worked at odd times for twenty-one years. He says this model was made from observation, without the aid of a picture or[Pg 60] drawing of any kind. He says he visited the church so many times while the work was in progress that people in the neighborhood commented on his presence.
Van Zandt also has a model of a beer wagon, which is similar to those he made for a brewery exhibit at the World’s Fair in Chicago. A complete model of the brewery was shown at the fair, and Van Zandt says he undertook the work of making the wagon after numerous other men had attempted their manufacture and failed.
His work on the brewery exhibit required an entire winter. He made eighteen brewery wagons, thirty-four freight cars, and six trolley cars and trailers.
Funeral Held After Thirty-two Years.
Satisfied that the skeleton found on a sand bar in Red River, near Fulton, was that of their father, drowned thirty-two years ago, Ben and James Wilson brought it to their home in Texarkana, Ark., and had it interred in the family lot, after funeral ceremonies.