Pinewood Derby!

Great way to spend time with your son. He learned a lot more than just how to build a toy.

Great memories-still have my son's car from about 24 years ago. Had a blast with the windup up planes and the rockets too.

Used to do this as a kid, I made a Tan Hummer complete with a tan army man bazooka guy sticking out of the turret and the year after that a great white shark. I won 1st place in design and 2nd in speed with the shark. Dad bought us a jigsaw and we used lots of files, hands as, exacto knives, and sandpaper. It was a lot of fun. One of the families in our group had a Dad that was a mechanical engineer in the group and they always placed 1st in speed. Glad your boy had fun!

Velocitas, Opprimere,
Violentia Operandi

I have very fond memories of my dad building my car for me and winning quite decidedly.

Mine all sucked as neither Dad nor I were much of a woodworker but what impresses me most is the level of involvement your son had. At most of the events I've seen, you could clearly tell which cars were done by parents and which ones had even the minutest involvement by the boys.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aloha_Shooter

Mine all sucked as neither Dad nor I were much of a woodworker but what impresses me most is the level of involvement your son had. At most of the events I've seen, you could clearly tell which cars were done by parents and which ones had even the minutest involvement by the boys.

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The goal is not only for the car to be a team effort, but to have a project that forces more guy time that you can bond over. The younger the scout the more parental involvement needed.

I let my boy drill all the holes, use the band saw, the belt sander and spray a little paint. A little intro to woodworking without ending up in the ER. Every year as he grows I let him take over more of the process. He's excited to learn how to do it and will end up building his own car by himself. He has big plans for his car next year. Even though he'll only be 8 next year, I bet I wont be able to do much to it. So I'll build my own car to race in the open category so we can still work together.

Split households also complicate things timing wise so some dads have to do more than they would like just to have a car for them to race.

After talking to the lady at Home Depot yesterday about what a great experience it is to share with your kids, who then informed me, that all the dads walking around Home Depot asking questions the last couple of weeks did not look like they were enjoying it. LOL!






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I have good memories of pinewood derbies.

Dad helped all of us build cars. As mentioned above somewhere, Dad wasn't a great carpenter, so we went with pretty basic designs.