Adult Pine Wood Derby

WNYcarpenter

My partner at work was soaking in the tub one morning and thought we'd get a kick out of having a pine wood derby.

$25 to enter, food,beer and prizes included and the rest was donated to the Boy Scouts.

It was a great time, and another excuse to spend a Saturday drinking beer. We did have one accident that required us to send down the fire truck.

Tinstaafl

Wait a minute! What kind of work is it that you do?!?

ChrWright

Did you guys follow the usual specs/rules or was this an "unlimited" class race?

This is the car "WE" built for my youngest son's most recent pinewood derby:



The eyes are philips head screws.
The fins are cut from vinyl siding color chips.
We pressed the gills with dimes.
The teeth and fin grooves we pressed with a regular screwdriver.

The body shape required a "few" power tools--chop saw, bandsaw, jig saw, and orbital sander.

Plus the sacrifice of one of his lego men--who was cut down with a small detail saw and super glued into a recess in the mouth also gouged out with the screw driver (you gotta love soft pine).

We've raced the last three years in that silly race for scouts with mixed results. This year, I figured we'd forget trying to be the fastest and try to win the style award. In the end, this was probably the fastest car we've built so far.

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OGStilts

So how did you do with the style award? Very creative and nicely done. All I could ever come up with when I was a kid was trying to duplicate the look of an Indy car.


WNY-

Ha that's a riot. Looks like everyone took it very seriously as it looks like some time was spent building and painting those cars.

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ChrWright

Placed second in the "best of show" category...

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Aframe

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Aframe

His would not of been #4 would it??

world llc

did #11 win by a nose?

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Leo G

When my son was in the Boy Scouts we did the Pinewood Derby also. Dad got a little carried away and made a few spares. I was able to enter and one of them got best show. It was long enough ago that I can't for the life of me remember which one it was. I made four of them. My son made his own, he cut on the band saw and did the sanding. I did the painting and he did the stickers and clear coat.

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WNYcarpenter

I was suprised...some people had over $50 in their cars, and it showed! The majority of folks had derby experience through their kids/grandkids of course.

I was embarassed...I had a cool idea, but never expected people to take it so seriously...but that made it that much more fun.

We followed the official BSA guidelines, including everyone must start from scratch and use the wheels from the kit. We had two races..."stock" no more than 5 oz, and "modified" no more than 12 oz. After the Stock race we had a 45 minute intermission so we could add the extra 7oz to our cars which most people did.

We sold 32 of 50 kits and I think 28 cars actually raced. Every car raced in each of the 4 lanes and the winner was decided by a point system. The highest I finished was 2nd, the rest were 3rd and 4th.

One of our plumbers is a troop leader and was happy to allow us the use of the track. The local VFW let us set up there and got a little xtra business.

The whole deal is computerized, so there were no arguments! We weighed in/passed inspection at registration and the scout leader did everything else. The rest of us sat back and had a good time!

This was such a good idea and it benefitted the BSA

concretemasonry

Did they ever do anything to prohibit the use of bearings and machining the nails or axles? Years ago that was the secret if you had the right front/rear balance and a low effective frontal area.

At one time people were using wind tunnels.

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Dick

Engineer, designer and consultant recently active domestically and internationally on construction and design in about 35 countries.

WNYcarpenter

I doubt it...There were a lot of similar questions and I think the answer ended up being, that it was up to the custodian of the track to decide what was appropriate for the sake of the track. As far as I know there were no problems, this was about having fun.....

$800 was collected... most went to the Stock win, then modified, best in show, food, a keg of beer, and of course the BSA. I honestly don't know what the payouts were.

If this becomes an annual affair with bigger winnings, I imagine the structure will tighten....I know what I'll be doing regardless

concretemasonry

When I helped my son build one, we were overwhelmed by the efforts put out by the father/son teams where the father may have had the access to the tools and equipment and wanted to teach the son what could be done with effort. - It was almost as bad as little league.

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Dick

Engineer, designer and consultant recently active domestically and internationally on construction and design in about 35 countries.

Leo G

I was just having fun.

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