Got Wood?

Been a little busy lately, hence the lack of posts. Busy with what?, you say. Pinewood derby of course. Adam is a Bear this year and we have fun with the derby. We like to go fast, but more importantly, look cool. With this being his third year and building our seventh car.....yeah I said seven. See last year my wife and I had a bright idea to suggest we have a parents race the night before to raise money for the pack. Since we suggested it, we had to enter it. So that meant a car for each of us last year and the same this year-seven total. So here is his first car which won best design in his den. Lightning McQueen, of course. Ka-chow!

Last year he wanted Jeff Gordon. It was all NASCAR. For some reason that year I had the urge to sit on the couch, eat Doritos and drink Busch beer. I gained lots of weight and had to have therapy to correct my reduction in vocabulary. After peeling off the life size 24 stickers from the sides of my truck, I moved on. This car also won best design is his den and raced to 6th place in the pack which meant a trip to the district races. This is a much more intense crowd and we went from top amatuer to bottom pro. This year has been all Legos all the time. So when I asked him what he wanted to make his car like he handed me a Lego rescue truck. Off we went! I told him that to make it look more realistic we would have to shorten the block some and make it taller so the proportions would be closer. Both of these changes theoretically will cause your car to run slower, theoretically. We didn't go crazy but tried to make it look like his Lego truck. I liked this one alot! It's simple, but cool. Turned out to be a pretty fast car anyway. Didn't win any design awards, but got 6th place again so districts here we come.

With my first car I wanted to try something different. The block of wood they give you is 7" long, 1 3/4" wide and 1 1/2" high. You then place the wheels on either side of the block and the 1 3/4" sets the cars stance and cannot be changed. How many cars do you see driving down the road with their wheels outside the body of the car? So I did some measuring and figured out how wide I could make the block and then bore wheel wells and maintain the correct width. An easy way to do this would be to glue pieces onto the sides, but I wanted a seamless body so I went to work. I ended up getting second in the parents race to a car with totally modified wheels. While this is allowed in the parents race, my car was legal to the kids' rules. Dig the attempt at the neon down lighting?

This year I wanted to something other than a car, truck or anything I had seen before. It took a while to come up with an idea and then it hit me. A racing pinewood derby track. Enough said, it was good for second again and the guy who won raced the same car as last year! The committee(my wife and me) amended the rules for next year so he won't be doing that again.

Now onto the most simple and best ideas. Mandy is truely into it for the fun, not competition. This car took about half the time to make that mine did and I think it's just as cool if not cooler. How many bitten watermelon wedges have you seen with dual exhausts and seeds made out of lead?

And now for this years best parent car. We first ditched the "factory" wood block. In search of the perfect chassis, we looked in the back yard. Mandy took special leader training this year and is working on the last steps of her Wood Badge training. It's pretty involved and it's been a ton of work. Her car is the Wood Badge symbol, on wheels. Yep, it's a log with a hand carved hatchet, river birch in case you're wondering.

The way I see it, if we both enter a car in the parents race for Adam's remaining two years and do the same for all of Eric's five years, then I'm looking at another 21 cars! Sounds like I might have to buy some more wood working tools.