Saturday, March 21, 2009

Pinewood Derby - Ready to Race

Daniel is a Tiger Cub Scout and this is his first time joining a Pinewood Derby Race. I'm helping him create his 1st Pinewood Derby car.

This is the Pinewood Derby kit given to us during one of the Den Meetings
I helped Daniel create the designs. Here's a sketch of how the Pinewood Derby would look like.
The top sketch is the side view of the car while the bottom sketch will be the top view.
I showed Daniel how to use the coping saw, chisel, file and sandpaper. After cutting the car and sanding it a bit, it looks like this.
This is the top view.
I asked Daniel to paint the entire car yellow. I did put a 2nd coating of paint to make it look better.
Side view
We were supposed to go to a pre-weigh in but we found out from our neighbor that weights are needed to reach the maximum weight of 5 ounces.

We drilled a hole on the jetpack area to be able to put pennies on it. We painted the jetpack gold.
Sketched the legs and painted the shoes brown.
The red color is placed on the jetpack's tailpipe/exhaust.
Sketched the face and body and painted the blue on the body.
Here's another look
I brought the car at a nearby post office to have it weighed. I added 15 pennies but the weight is only 4.1o oz.

I asked Daniel to put putty to cover up the hole.
We then carved the bottom part to be able to put additional weights.
I asked Daniel to assist on cutting the end of the car. We made it to slant going inside and re-painted the shoes and added some design for the soles.
I asked Daniel to superglue and screw the additional weight.
Daniel suggested to add the hands on the sides.
We had a den meeting last night and one parent brought a weighing machine but only shows grams. He said that we need to add additional weight and suggested to add a quarter to make the maximum weight.

We proceeded to a post office after the meeting and weighed the car again. The weight is 4.80 oz and by adding a quarter, the total weight will reach the maximum weight of 5.0 oz.

Here's the added quarter on the car. Also if you notice, we're using red wheels. We damaged the black wheels when we drilled a hole on the jetpack. I forgot to remove the wheels and it spun around when we were drilling the hole.
Here's the finished car. We're ready to race!!!

2 comments:

Julia said...

That is one project you can be proud of. And the photo documentation along the way... Nice job, what a DAD!

oicned said...

Thanks! My younger one wanted a red car... Daniel's car did ok on the race. I'll be posting the results soon...