The First Pinewood Derby

One of the events Dude was really looking forward to in Boy Scouts was the Pinewood Derby. A block of wood, some wheels, power tools, sandpaper, paint, decals, a huge Matchbox car track . . . what could be better? Not much when you’re 9 We went to MN over Christmas break, so we took the kit with us so he could get started. Dude, Hubby, and Monster Grandpa had some great Guy Time out in the garage designing Dude’s car.

After cutting out the car and using the belt sander for the big sanding work, Dude went to work on the detail sanding.

Putting on the finishing sanding touches . . .

It was too cold to paint outside, so Dude and Hubby put a box in the shower in our crappy basement bathroom when we got home and spray painted it in there. Dude thought black would be awesome and very cool looking - so black it was. He chose a pretty difficult design only because the middle was very thin and could’ve easily broken. And with so much of the block of wood being cut away, they had to drill some carefully placed holes and put tungsten weights inside to get the car to place the center of gravity properly and get the car as close to the 5 oz. limit as possible. The finished product . . .

Looks like a winner to me! Dude and Hubby took the car to weigh in and got to add one more weight to get it to 4.9 oz. After weigh in and inspection, you have to leave your car there so you don’t make any illegal modifications overnight.

The next morning, we were up and ready to go to the races! Dude was so excited after Hubby showed him his old cars from cub scouts. Dude checked out all the available hardware while we waited for the race to start. A boy can dream, right?

There were 66 cars in the race, so there were a lot of heats! Each car got to run on each of the 4 lanes. I’d never been to a Pinewood Derby before, but I had no clue it was so automated! Everything from the start button to the times to the rankings to matching similar speed cars together to make good races - it was pretty darn cool! Dude and his buddy had a good time watching all the heats while waiting for their cars to race.

The races started - Dude was so excited to watch his car race! I mean, who wouldn’t be after working so hard on it and waiting so patiently.

The first race - he came in 4th out of 4. The 2nd race - 3rd. Third race - 4th. Fourth race - 4th. He was SOOOO disappointed! The thing was, all the cars did well and were so close. Out of 66 cars, the difference in time between the winning car and the last place car was only 1.05 seconds. Not bad! Dude ended up coming in 62 out of 66. He was quite bummed until we pointed out the times to him. And after we got his car, we noticed that the last weight they’d put in at inspection was missing! It had fallen out at some point . . . so as far as Dude knows, that weight could have been the different in some time He was pretty excited to start thinking about next year’s car already on the ride home . . . I love how he just bounces back and takes on a challenge.

After all the trophies for placing were awarded, they awarded trophies for craftsmanship. Since it was our first race, we had no clue how fun the cars could be. Maybe next year in addition to working on more speed, we’ll go for one of those craftsmanship trophies :-) There were tons of really fun cars - the boys did well - and honestly, I don’t know which car won the race or the craftsmanship award. Here were some of our favorites out of the designs:

Swiss cheese with a mouse on top:

2 Lego guys surfing on big waves

Cool white car that I’m sure has a name but I don’t know it

A Wii Remote

And my personal favorite, the roller coaster. I love how all the people have their hands up in the air

All in all, our first Pinewood Derby was a lot of fun and a great experience. We can’t wait for next year! But first, Dude is getting very excited about his overnight sledding campout in the mountains in a couple weeks - good times!