This past Wednesday was our Pack's Pinewood Derby. With David just a few short weeks away from crossing over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts, this was his last Pinewood Derby.
At this point, it was time to visit Mr. Beasly, a nice gentleman who lives in Logan, that kindly offered to carve out the base design for the kids using his band saw.
The night of the Derby (Wednesday, March 25th) we had 32 boys show up to race their cars on the 50 foot track.
The Pinewood Derby track was huge! At first we didn't know if it was going to fit inside the gym of the church. Finally, we realized that if we ran the track diagonally across the gym we'd just make it.
Devon was our official scorer. He recorded the results of every race on an Excel spreadsheet. Joshua was close at hand, as one of the races official judges.
After many, many, many, races... we whittled the results down to three boys. One boy won first place and two tied for second. They were all thrilled.
For those of you unfamiliar with Cub Scouts, the Pinewood Derby is the highlight of the year for these boys. Each boy in the pack is give a block of wood, two axles, and 4 wheels.
The instructions are simple: transform this wood into whatever you want it to be. The rules are the car can not weigh any more than 5 ounces.
As you can imagine, some kids keep it simple... while other kids go wild and make their car as complex as can be imagined. In some packs the dad's have been known to get so involved in "helping" their sons... that they have had to institute a "Dads Race" and they encourage the dads to build their own car! This doesn't seem to be a problem in our pack. I think most of the boys were in charge of building their own cars.
This year, David decided he wanted to build a Lamborghini racing car. He sat for hours "googling" on the internet to find just the right photo to start from. Then he drew designs on paper. And finally, drew his design onto his block of wood.
At this point, it was time to visit Mr. Beasly, a nice gentleman who lives in Logan, that kindly offered to carve out the base design for the kids using his band saw.With that done. David spent hours in the garage sanding his car down to make all the edge smooth. He then decided to add side pieces, which required work with a set of dremels we own, and even more sanding. Finally, David was ready to paint. He chose a deep burgandy... which made his car look very slick.
The night of the Derby (Wednesday, March 25th) we had 32 boys show up to race their cars on the 50 foot track.The Pinewood Derby track was huge! At first we didn't know if it was going to fit inside the gym of the church. Finally, we realized that if we ran the track diagonally across the gym we'd just make it. Devon was our official scorer. He recorded the results of every race on an Excel spreadsheet. Joshua was close at hand, as one of the races official judges.We had tons of parents on hand to help. I worked the registration table. Two moms headed up the starting line table, and several dads were busy all night long at the "Pit" table.
David's car did well, he placed 4th in the first group of 12 cars. But since only 3 boys were able to move on to the finals... David was done. However, since he is boy with great sportsmanship skills, he took the defeat in stride and cheered his fellow cubs on throughout the rest of the races.
(I also think that it helped that David received the 2nd place trophy last year... so he at least knows what it is like to win already.)
(I also think that it helped that David received the 2nd place trophy last year... so he at least knows what it is like to win already.)
After many, many, many, races... we whittled the results down to three boys. One boy won first place and two tied for second. They were all thrilled. Even though the Pinewood Derby is now complete, David is still planning to continue working on his car. Now he is thinking about adding a racing stripe.
