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| Vigo:
Well, it is first and foremost about making something cool with your son. But there is no harm in trying to win, and you are designing a car to be fast. I loved pinewood derby as a kid. I learned a ton of my woodworking skills from my dad through projects like this. I spent a long time with him making a car, When I was a kid, the wedge shaped cars hit the scene and that was the "cheater" cars of my day. My best car was built in the style of the Batmobile. I spent so much time working on it with my dad. I was accusedof my dad building my car for me, but he just worked with me on every step and showed me how I can do better. I designed the car, and other than a couple tricky cuts he did for me, I did almost everything myself. He really pushed me spend time and make it quality. I remember spending what feels like hours sitting on the basement steps and sanding that block of wood, shaping the car with rasps and carving in details like the tail fins and windshield. The goal was never winning, but that didn't stop him from teaching me all the things that slow a car down, and coming up with a number of good methods to overcome any obsticle. What I loved just as much was when I was in Boy Scouts. My troop had a annual tradition called the "Ironwood Derby". For any Boy Scout leaders here, I recommend doing this. We would take our old pinewood derby cars (or start fresh), and make a new car with no weight limit. The only rule is that it has to use the pinewood derby wheels and axles. Any modifications beyond that are OK. It is absolutely a blast making a 10+ pound car and hoping the wheels hold up. Of course there are engineering methods to get the most weight on your car without it breaking....the sky is the limit. I think my winning car was made with railroad spikes and steel pipes filled with lead. :cheers: |
| j.fitzenr:
--- Quote from: deadmoney5 on April 21, 2015, 10:04:21 am ---Just like in sports, parents ruin everything. You can't just be a kid and have fun in the participation.. you have to WIN WIN WIN at all costs. :soapbox: --- End quote --- I spent my high school years coaching, umpiring, reffing, etc. for youth sports. Still among my favorite jobs ever, and still among the worst. Having grown men physically threaten you, when you're a scrawny 15 year old because a 7-year-old girl swung and whiffed at strike three is a very strange experience. As was being reprimanded for playing a kid in left field, after I asked him where he wanted to play, and he said left field. That said I'm sure I'm going to have a few flip out moments when I'm eventually a father myself in those situations, so. That Ironwood derby thing sounds like a blast! I remember in Middle School we did an impromptu pinewood derby ripoff with essentially no rules like that... so frickin fun! |
| mpm32:
--- Quote from: JDFan on April 21, 2015, 10:13:52 am --- --- Quote from: deadmoney5 on April 21, 2015, 10:04:21 am ---Just like in sports, parents ruin everything. You can't just be a kid and have fun in the participation.. you have to WIN WIN WIN at all costs. :soapbox: --- End quote --- Actually from what I see it seems these days in sports everyone just gets participation ribbons cause they don't want any losers -- it's almost like they shouldn't even bother to keep score ! :soapbox: --- End quote --- My kids alpine ski race, Slalom and Giant Slalom. Sure some of the parents are nuts but at the end of the day it's the hill, the kid and the clock. There's only 5 spots on the podium through U14, U16 and up 3 spots. Some kids never set foot on the podium. Compared to the other sports they do where everyone gets a trophy, they learn the most from ski racing. My son got a participation trophy and he said what's this for? We didn't win anything? He didn't even want it. |
| dkersten:
--- Quote from: j.fitzenr on April 21, 2015, 01:07:48 pm ---Having grown men physically threaten you, when you're a scrawny 15 year old because a 7-year-old girl swung and whiffed at strike three is a very strange experience. As was being reprimanded for playing a kid in left field, after I asked him where he wanted to play, and he said left field. That said I'm sure I'm going to have a few flip out moments when I'm eventually a father myself in those situations, so. --- End quote --- I was never into sports growing up, so I had no idea what parents were like. Then when my son turned 5, he wanted to play hockey (he's 22 now). There was a special meeting for parents that we thought was mandatory, but it turned out to be a "parent awareness" seminar that basically talked about what not to do as a parent, both during games and after. At the class I was skeptical, thinking there is no way any parent is like this. Then I went to the first game, and holy hell those parents were frickin crazy! One mom was the loudest of them all. She didn't shut up the whole time, yelling at her son, yelling at the ref, yelling at other parents, yelling at the opposing team... Then her son took a hit and went down and the place went silent, except for her, screaming for him to get up. When she realized the entire arena went silent except for her, she said loudly, "Oh, if he were hurt he'd be crying." The next sound we heard was the kid starting to wail. That shut her up for about 5 minutes. The team made the playoffs and I couldn't believe the parents who would be up at the glass pounding on it and yelling at their kids to do things. It was a real eye opener, and while most parents are pretty good these days, there are still a few who take it way too seriously. The irony of that whole hockey thing is after my divorce I ended up dating a woman who had 3 boys all in hockey. Turns out she would sit with my wife way back then and watch the kids practice, and my son ended up best friends with her son, and then mortal enemies. Their high school fight ended up on youtube with some 150k views (my son won, lol). I didn't know any of this before we started dating. When we went to games, she was one of those parents who would yell and scream at the refs and other players, lol. I did a pinewood derby car back in about 1977. My dad was inept when it came to tools, so it was pretty much a wedge. We spray painted it but my dad was impatient for it to dry completely so he put it in the oven. Unfortunately that bubbled the paint really bad and nearly burned the house down. So he ended up staying up all night remaking the car after I went to bed. We won because he used graphite on the axels, something that wasn't common back then. I was like 6 years old, so I didn't know a lot of this until years later. I can count on one hand the number of things we did together growing up (he's my step dad and we have nothing in common), so it was pretty special doing that with him. |
| Howard_Casto:
From what I've read on the subject at least, shape has little or nothing to do with it. Weight and reducing friction does. So the reason a lot of these wedge shaped cars do well is because they are the heaviest. So do that and get some good axels. Or you know actually go with what's in the kit and teach your kid a valuable lesson about losing and not being a sore winner even though all the other dads clearly cheated. ;) |
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