Pinewood Derby - 2011

This year's Cub Scout Pinewood Derby was last night. It went well and all of the boys (and girls who raced after the main race) had a great time, though once again Ian was bummed that his car didn't win the speed race. Next year will be his last derby so we're going to have to go all out to see if we can make a super fast car. But, his car looked sweet! It was a rocket (or missle or bullet) that was painted gold and had decals down the side. Cami's car was a wedge of cheese with a mouse on top. The reason his car didn't win was it was too light. Even with the weights we added it was only 3 ounces, so that by the time it got to the end of the track it was starting to slow down while the heavier cars kept going. We weren't willing to screw washers and glue quarters to it to make it heavier. The pictures below are the steps to making Ian's and Cami's cars. Sorry for the slightly fuzzy photos. I'm getting used to my new camera thingy. Step 1: Mark the blocks so we know where to cut them. For Ian's car cut the block in half top-to-bottom. Ian's car had a more detailed shape, so cut that shape to save ourselves some time. Cami's was an easy shape to cut, but we were a little spazzy while doing it so we power sanded it to remove the wavy cut. This picture is before the wavy cut was sanded off. Ian's required major sanding to make it round. Daddy hand carved it using a carving knife and then the sanding wasn't so bad.

Once it was sanded we spray painted it gold.

Cami painted her block as a piece of cheese, and prepared it for the mouse.

Ian's car was so light that we had to hollow it out and add as much weight as we could.

Here are the final cars. They both looked really cool and the kids were happy with them, but as I said earlier Ian wasn't happy that his did not win. He was also sort of upset that his design award was lame. He won the "Rocket Car" award. I have to agree that the Bishopric could have been a little more creative.