Pinewood Derby!

My son just competed in his first Pinewood Derby today. For those of you who do not have children or have lived under a rock, this is a Cub Scout thing where they race cars made out of blocks of pine. In theory, the boys are supposed to make the cars themselves under careful adult supervision. The level of parent involvement is supposed to vary by age. In my case, it was 95% parent, 5% kid. My child is a Tiger Scout, which is on the very young side of the curve (6 years old). He also has the attention span of a fruit fly, and managed to cut himself on his school pencil box, so there was no way I was going to let him near a power tool. He got to pick out the design by looking at truck pictures on Google. He picked the paint scheme, and I also let him use the white spray paint, which I will be scraping off my floor later tonight.

Fortunately for me, he picked a 60s Chevy C10, which is fairly boxy. I cut the fenders and cab out of a spare piece of 2x4, then cut the profiles on the table saw and router. The cab was done slowly by hand chisel, and made passable in appearance courtesy of wood filler.
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A couple coats of Zinser sealing primer by my boy.
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A tape job by Dad.
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I had a bunch of super-glossy black tractor and implement spray paint. I thought the truck looked pretty decent in all black, but my son wanted the two tone.
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When we pulled off the tape, there was quite a contrast between the glossy black and the matte primer.
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Fortunately, a coat of satin poly made everything a fairly even blend of matte.
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My son's Tiger den was pretty big, with 12 cars in the race. My friend built his son a pretty decent Humvee. I thought I had done a good job of hollowing out Vincent's car, but the Humvee was damned near a paper thin shell. I was impressed.
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Somebody's Dad is very talented.
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I brought a tool box to registration night, and spent a bunch of time helping parents tweak their cars. Some had track clearance issues, some were out of spec, and a fair amount were over-weight. Fortunately, with a little hammering, chiselling, drilling, and a lot of hot melt glue, we were able to get every one to qualify.
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The first race may have been the most attention my son has ever paid to anything in his life.
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They ran each car on all four lanes and then added the scores to get a cumulative. This helped isolate the effects of lane position, and there was one very fast lane.
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My son's truck ran surprisingly well. There is a very specific design science to building a fast car. They are mostly low profile wedges with carefully positioned weights and a specific center of gravity. Trucks have a hard time competing with this design because they are front heavy and have most of their weight distribution towards the front axle. I hollowed the crap out of my son's car and positioned the weights to bring the center of gravity exactly to the middle, but there wasn't much to be done about the aerodynamics, and I knew that going in. Still, he wanted a truck, not a narrow wedge of wood with wheels, so I built him a truck. It actually ran very well, consistently taking second place every time, regardless of track position. Not enough to be in the top 10% of the overall pack, but he did win 3rd place in his group of 12.
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I was talking to some other Dads about the local school, and within a moment, two of us realized we knew one another from this board. I ran into jreifsch80 (Rachel Ray of AKs), who has a son in the other pack. He had a black Charger that ran very well, also taking 3rd place in his bracket.

All in all, it was a good time. My son won a trophy and learned the value of being magnanimous in victory. I got to enjoy the sense of crushing domination over the cars and aspirations of lesser parents. We're both looking forward to next year's competition.

That's very cool. Thanks for sharing it.

Don't they still do a parent division?

When our boys were in Scouts, there was of course a level of parent/kid involvement, but there was also an adult only division where the Dads (or Moms) could show off their own as well.

I guess now we don't want any of the kids to feel bad? On the other hand, the kids were always the ones bragging about Pop's car winning whatever category and such.

Regardless, it's such a great character building event.

P.S. How did the cheese do? I LOL at that one.

Now THAT brings back memories from nearly 5 decades ago. [Driver]

Looks like your kid did a solid job on his 5%. Probably made up for your 95%. [Coffee]

Sadly, the Cheese did not stand alone.
On the other hand, the Pickle finished in the top of the whole group.

There is indeed a parents & "Outlaws" league. It was dominated by the pack leadership and folks who had kids in multiple tiers of scouting. I thought about entering a car of my own, but didn't have the time.
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It is a lot different then in my day. I was 'older' when I joined Cub Scouts (10 or 11), and it was expected that the older boys do most of the construction. It was also a wooden track with a couple of flags at the end. This time out, it was a carefully crafted aluminum track with a computer controlled gate and timer accurate to 1/100th of a second. Some folks take this stuff very seriously.

Our daughter placed in her grade for the group science fair this year, without ANY involvement from me, and very little from mom. We were very proud of her. However, her excitement at placing awakened a monster inside me and all I can think about is having her make a solar powered aquaponic garden for next year in an attempt to take first place, in the district for all of 1-12th grade. I don't want to look like the parent that does the project for the kid, but that sweet truck you made makes me have second thoughts. :D

What the...!!!

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...1d5a3fcb05.jpg

Still got mine from 30+ years ago.

http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/a...43B1527006.jpg

The shape of the car has just about no effect on how fast it will be. It is all about where the weight is, how straight it rolls, and how polished the axles are.

When I was in the Cub Scouts we did this every year. The first two years I did not place but the next three I won first place. My cars looked like very much like this in shape, I made sure the axles were aligned and the wheels all touched the surface the same. I would build the cars, my dad would chisel out a hole in the bottom and we would go to the post office to weigh it on the beam scales they used back then. He would add fishing weights to get it up to within a fraction of the max weight to make sure we would pass weigh in at the race. In my own flash of brilliance, I asked that dad put the weight at the rear of the car. This gave it a little extra shove at the end of the ramp and a little higher speed at the end of the track. We went to the all city championships two years in a row and got a second and a third.

Thanks for bringing back some great memories.

Wow, great job on the S10 replica. I like the wood slab bed and your son's name on the tailgate.

When I was a Cub I carved a Pinewood Derby car with a wood rasp and a sandpaper block to look like the midget race cars that ran at Lakeside Speedway. Painted it in the cub scout blue and gold colors with Testor oil paints. My Dad advised but I did the work. Hollowed a cavity in the bottom to add lead to bring it up to weight. Didn't win the race but got some award for the design. Early 1960's. The cheap plastic wheels used an upholstery nail for the axles, which ended up being key to smooth running. The winners smoothed the nail shaft with crocus cloth. Wish I still had the car, it was a beauty.

Grew up in the Scouting program. Eagle Scout, Order of the Arrow.

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Originally Posted by newracer

The shape of the car has just about no effect on how fast it will be. It is all about where the weight is, how straight it rolls, and how polished the axles are.

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Give the OP a break. he's a woodworker, not a nascar driver based on him trying to get his truck through a 10' wide gate . Well part of his truck

My son won the unlimited class the last year he competed. He also won the hill climb the same year. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...b13ecf922d.jpg

Another great tradition passed down.[Beer][AR15]

Your shop teacher sounds way cooler then mine was. I made myself a rather primitive gravity knife out of some sheet metal in 7th grade. The blade didn't come out of the handle very well, and it was kind of bendy, but I was proud of it. Showed it to my teacher. Got me a 1 day suspension instead of an "A". Though I suppose I was lucky to come of age in a generation that still had shop class, and archery in gym.

You can go very, very far down the rabbit hole with the Derby these days. Despite my Engineering background, I elected not to. My son wanted a truck, so I put some hours in to give him a truck that he could also play with after the race. Something he knows his Dad put the effort into for him. Next year, he will be a little older, and perhaps a little more involved in the parts cutting process. But for now, he's on cloud 9 and I don't regret a minute spent.

Cool truck! I went down the pinewood derby physics rabbit hole. We just finished up my boys car tonight. His car last year was pretty fast. Hope this year his car does well. We'll find out tomorrow. As long as it's not last I'm good.

His is the black car.

https://vimeo.com/202597846


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Awesome job on the truck!

I raced pinewood derby cars a few years way back when I was in the scouts.. The first couple years I made fancy looking cars and always lost big... didn't even come close. One year I said fuck it and I just traced the generic wedge shape that comes with the kit and I actually got 1st place and went on to the state competition getting second there.. Go figure.

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.

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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.