NORWAY — Paper and a box of wooden matches.

That’s about all 85-year-old Louis Senecal needs to create intricately detailed models of everything from a 18-wheel tractor-trailer with mirrors made from the silver lining of peanut butter jar caps to a five-foot-tall replica of the USS Constitution, complete with 55 cannons made from the heads of old clothespins.

Senecal, who moved from Phippsburg to live with his son, Louis Senecal Jr., on Main Street about five years ago, spends hours every day making models in his makeshift workshop. A scratched mahogany dining room table by a group of windows is his worktable.

Senecal is blind in his right eye and has only 40 percent of his vision in his left eye. The desk lamp on the table helps him see, but his work is mostly done by touch, he said.

“I can’t see my hands in front of my face,” he said.

With the help of his son, who draws the designs that his father describes to him, Senecal has created more than 100 models, including model airplanes, tug boats and hats, using thin poster board and wooden matches that are burned and cleaned individually.

“Every day, we do something new,” Senecal Jr. said. “He’s been going blind for 10 to 12 years. I can’t even believe he can do this.”

The building process involves layering thin pieces of poster board to create the form. He then glues on burned matches and other materials. Once completed, he polyurethanes his creation, making it surprisingly strong and heavy.

Senecal delights in demonstrating the process he uses to burn the matches.

“You can’t just light the matches and blow it out. That’s no good,” he says with a glint in his eye. Senecal discovered that if he placed the matches all in the same direction and lit them together in a slightly opened box, then shut the box to snuff out the air at just the precise time, he could get the effect he needed.

Senecal picks up a box of matches and lights the bottom end of the box. As he quickly shuts the box, a soft “whoosh” sound escapes, creating a momentary burst of flame followed by a large puff of smoke. The procedure is always done outdoors in a protected area, away from any wind.

Senecal says he has never been hurt during the procedure, and the Fire Department has only been called once, when a concerned neighbor saw smoke billowing from Senecal’s yard.

But the process is not without hazards.

“Every once in a while, I get a live match,” he said with a chuckle, recalling the rogue match head that burst into flames while sanding his latest creation — a full-size acoustic guitar.

Unique talent

Senecal grew up in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with four sisters and four brothers. He used to hand-carve sculptures of animals to give to his siblings to play with, but the discovery of his talent with wooden matches and paper only happened in recent years while playing with a rolled dollar bill which he thought looked like a canoe.

“I said to myself, ‘Hmm. I think I’ll go home and build a ship.’”

He built a reproduction of La Amistad — a 19th-century, two-masted schooner that became famous after the slaves it was transporting took over the ship.

It’s hard to say where his talent came from. Senecal said no one in his immediate family showed any unusual talents — except perhaps for his uncle, Ed.

According to Senecal, his uncle owned a filling station in Saratoga Springs in the mid 1930s. In the back room of the station, Uncle Ed began to make and sell name pins as a way to pick up some extra money. Unable to afford materials, Uncle Ed began to buy cans of alphabet soup. “He strained the letters and waited till they dried,” said Senecal, who was about 9 years old at the time. His uncle glued the dried letters onto pins and sold them for 15 cents each.

Senecal has been offered thousands of dollars for his creations, but he prefers to use his talent to create legacies for his family, including four generations of Louis Senecals.

After being told by his eye doctor ten years ago that he was going blind, he decided he had to do something keep busy, he said.

“I don’t want to go stir-crazy,” Senecal said.

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