Pinewood Derby

[jammin0]

So I have mixed feelings about the pinewood derby.  I had a awesome dad growing up but he was usually pretty busy and there were six of us kids.  When the pinewood derby rolled around for the 3 years that I was in cub scouts, he was very willing to let me use his tools but I don't remember him participating much in the way of helping me out.  I would always feel fairly proud of my car until I showed up and saw all the other cars that the boys' dads had helped quite a bit more.  I usually got last place and my designs/paint jobs while unique were sub par compared to the competition.

Fast forward 25 years later and my son is now 8 years old and having his first pinewood derby.  A little bit of disappointment never hurt anyone but I felt like I should at least help level the playing field some.  I am pretty sure that he won't win for the fastest car but I thought he should have something that at least looked cool.  While I did a lot of "helping" he learned how the circuit worked, learned how to solder, and even did a lot of work with the graphics.  Here's what we came up with:



What do you think?

[BadMouth]

I'm sure it got lots of attention, which he probably liked.

My dad obsessed over my pinewood derby car and wouldn't let me work on it.
It came in 2nd to someone else's father's car.  IIRC their father had polished the axles and used some better type of powdered graphite.
This is before you could do a google search on how to make the fastest pine derby car.

[pbj]

I saw a kid with a single mom win it once.  She went to the hobby store, bought some kit and a hand saw and made the kid do everything while she observed. 

I got second place one year.  I think my dad let me paint it and nail the wheels on.

 

[jammin0]

I'm sure it got lots of attention, which he probably liked.

My dad obsessed over my pinewood derby car and wouldn't let me work on it.
It came in 2nd to someone else's father's car.  IIRC their father had polished the axles and used some better type of powdered graphite.
This is before you could do a google search on how to make the fastest pine derby car.

I know right, if you're willing to fork out the money you can even buy custom "axles" (I still like to call them nails) that have graphite baked into them and they are precision machined.

[j.fitzenr]

I remember all the precision machined 'aftermarket' stuff, and then rumors of actual 'cheater' stuff that you could get mail-order to SMOKE THE COMPETITION.  Parents + youth competition is weird. 

I loved it as a kid; I did okay one or two years, but basically my dad would basically make me do the work, then clean it up; I'd do the design and major cuts, he'd tighten them up, I'd sand, he'd sand better, I'd paint, etc.  I loved that damn derby, even though I think my best finish was like, 6th. 

Anyway, that Tron car is really friggin cool.  I loved the experience of working with my dad on that stuff and learning about all the tools, work, etc., and I'm sure your son had a blast... and wtg for teaching him how to solder!

[behrmr]

My son did PWD every year as a cub scout.  I made him work on the car.  Every one of his cars looked like a car a kid his age built.  The first year his car lost every race. Our track was bad and the car even jumped and broke twice.  He was really disappointed.  I watched some kids' cars just completely destroy everyone.  And those cars were clearly built by their dads.   That really pissed me off.  So what I did the next years was the same approach as before with one exception.  I polished the axles and wheels myself.  And made sure the weight of his car was perfect.  The next years his cars at least didn't get beaten in every race.  In fact we had one scouts car was nothing but a wedge cut out of the block and it won a lot.  So long story short....

Tip #1:  Make him help you.  It is supposed to be Father-Son time. That's the point.
Tip #2:  Polish the axles.  Put them in your drill and use high grit sandpaper to take the mold marks off.  When you are happy with them finish them off with steel wool and then polish them with Brasso.
Tip #3:  Make your weight exactly 5 oz.   There are some at the hobby store that work very well.  The round ones are nice because you can drill a hole in the car and put the weight in and putty it up.  Take superglue and weights to the weigh in.  Glue a penny right to the top of the car if you have to.
Tip #4:  Do a simple wedge car.  He can add things to his.  My son liked to glue lego star wars figures to his cars. 
Tip #5:  Put most of the weight over the back axles.  And just enough over the front to keep it stable

If you have any influence in your cub pack convince them to set up the track and do a test weigh in so the kids can test their cars out.  We used to do that the weekend before the PWD.   

And finally, if you have a pack with hard-core PWD dads suggest a separate set of heats after the kids are done racing for the parents to race their cars and give out a simple trophy.

[lilshawn]

single mom with no tools except a butter knife and metal icecream scoop as a hammer. 

I carved a wedge slope into the front of that mofo like nobody's business... spraypainted it red. worst looking car EVER.

last time I ever did a cub scout pinewood derby. 

all good though, builds character...or something.

[jammin0]

single mom with no tools except a butter knife and metal icecream scoop as a hammer. 

I carved a wedge slope into the front of that mofo like nobody's business... spraypainted it red. worst looking car EVER.

last time I ever did a cub scout pinewood derby. 

all good though, builds character...or something.

[deadmoney5]

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.

[JDFan]

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.

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 !

[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. 

[j.fitzenr]

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.

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]

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.

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 !

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]

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. 

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. 

[Ond]

Sounds like a great fun 'father and son project' to get into.  Like everything with kids make sure to involve them in the process in some way.  I've never experienced a Pinewood Derby but when I was a kid I grew up on a street which intersected another at the bottom of a steep hill.  In the summer months the neighbourhood kids would put together ramshackle billy carts as we called them made out of anything they could find.  Some of them resembled something from the Wacky Racers with milk crates and timber from pallets and wotnot  .   The defining characteristic of these was pram wheels up front and slick ball bearing wheels on a wooden axle at the back.  This allowed mad ---daisies--- to tear-ass down the hill and execute 360 degree (or more) spins as they came down with sparks showering out the rear of the cart. Crashes into gutters etc. were frequent often with the carts progressively falling apart on each trip down.  Its a miracle no one got killed.  I told my dad I wanted a billy cart too, he being a master carpenter, proceeded to put together some sleek dream machine for me that was so fast I was scared to even go half way up the hill.  Geez what was he thinking?  I'd never let my kids do that these days.

[j.fitzenr]

Geez what was he thinking?  I'd never let my kids do that these days.

Lol, isn't that what chlidhood is all about?  I remember my parents buying me a 'snowboard.'  It was a piece of plastic shaped like a skateboard, with metal runners.  No binding.  No handles.  It was a frickin' piece of plastic to fall off of!  That soapbox/cart stuff sounds fantastic!  I always dreamt of doing a soapbox derby kinda thang as a kid.  I got lucky in that a neighbor had a couple go-karts tho...

That seems to be an accelerating sentiment these days.  I don't even feel like I'm particularly "old school" (I'm 30) but even like, 80% of my childhood couldn't happen these days.  I think I finally started feeling "old" when I saw things like the parents who got ticketed because they let their 10 year old walk home from the park, etc.  Jesus, the crap we used to do.  I mean my dad made sure I had my own full tool kit by the time I was like 9, and when we said we wanted to build a treehouse, our parents just kinda handed us tools, pointed us at scrap wood, and said "dinner is at 7."  Not to mention all the goodies we lifted from the currently under construction houses... 

Oh to be a kid again.  I swear in retrospect we were all about 50/50 to survive it!

[Howard_Casto]

Well I don't think most sane people had a problem with the 10 year old... it was the 6 year old sibling with him.  That's a bit too young.

[j.fitzenr]

I honestly didn't even really read the story or the ages involved, just glanced at the headline and it got me into "man, times have changed" mode.  Hell if I were a parent I probably wouldn't even let the ten year old do it, let alone a six year old but that's neither here nor there, just got me thinkin' about my own childhood vs. the childhood of kids these days and wondering how I survived. 

Jammin, you're gonna have to update us as to how the car goes over, and how much it smokes the competition!  You might want to steal something from the Large Hadron Collider a la South Park, just in case.  And to think, I thought my car was cool because it had lightning-bolt decals on it.

[jammin0]

Well, the results are in.  His car placed 3rd overall and got a lot of oohs and ahhhs along the way.  I am kind of glad that he didn't take first place just because we have two more years and this year's design will be hard to beat.  I'm thinking he could do addressable RGBs next year and have it display messages, I think we'll have to start working on it sooner for the next one.

[Vigo]

Congrats, Jammin & Jammin Jr.