Copyright © 2002-2003 by Albegor.

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What you see could be called strange not as for the subject, that represents the P-51D Mustang of the W.W.II ace Major Leonard "Kit" Carson, of the 362nd Fighter Squadron, 357th Fighter Group, but for how and where I made it.
I made the drawing on nothing less than my desk of the scientific high school I attended, exploiting the "empty" moments of the lesson hours and I made the fuselage using the thin layer of aluminum of the chewing-gum wrapper, according to the procedure that I described below. Here are the unique photos, unfortunately of bad quality, that I took:

In lower left part of the drawing you can read the time in which I made it, that is from March 15 to April 20 of the year 1993 in a total of 46 hours, while to the right there is the dedication "to the IV H," probably my best scholastic year both in terms of friendships and scholastic output and because of that I remember it with the most pleasure.

Here is in detail the procedure that I followed to make the fuselage of the Mustang with the chewing-gum wrapper. First of all the wrapper I used were those of the well known chewing-gum with the "long taste", because they turned out to be the best for the purpose.
The most delicate operation consisted in the separation of the layer of aluminum from the light paper that is in contact with the chewing-gum. To do that I had to roll up the wrapper quite a lot of times on itself until it did get a grained appearance, in such way that it was easier to separate the two layers. The two following photos show the wrapper from the side of the aluminum layer before and after this treatment:

Then it was necessary to find the right points from which to start separating the two layers while paying much care to don't break the aluminum so to get an uniform layer and ready to work it. Once obtained this layer the thin film of glue that held it attached to the paper was enough to make it adhere to an even surface like the school desk.
I placed the layer on the pencil sketch and I started to press it and to chafe it with a piece of paper until it was completely even and shiny, then I could cut it with the X-Acto cutter.
It was a long and delicate procedure and I remember among the other things that the newer the packet of chewing-gums was, the easier was to separate the two layers.
Once the fuselage was made, I finished the model with the tools I used for my model scale hobby and I finally covered the artwork with a layer of transparent plastic to preserve it better.
The final result was indeed good and who saw it could but appreciate it.
That desk accompanied me up to the last day of high school and I since then haven't seen it anymore.
Who knows what end it came to...