Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: VonMessa on January 26, 2009, 09:33:54 PM
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and I'll show you ours (Pinewood, of course) :D
First pinewood derby for my son. :aok
http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff107/tymekeepyr/Derby%20Jeep/?albumview=slideshow (http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff107/tymekeepyr/Derby%20Jeep/?albumview=slideshow)
The blue one is MY first one ( I guess that makes me old) :noid
Just a quick clip (Lane 2, second from left) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwKwmNADTqg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwKwmNADTqg)
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Used to do that in Cub Scouts way back "in the day" :)
Was always a great blast, one year, we made a tank, I think an M-60 IIRC.
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My last year was my best year. I ALMOST got into the Final Five but got screwed in my last race when they gave me a bad lane (one lane on the track was warped or sticky or something, so was consistently slow). Ended up placing 6th. :furious
The guys that always won were the cars that were just as flat a block of wood as they could make. :rolleyes:
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When I was in, the kids that won were always the ones who's Dads obviously made the car for them in his woodshop. Kids coming in with cars that looked like Corvettes or that had been turned on a lathe until they looked like a wasp with wheels. Or had hollowed out the nose and put lead sinkers in there (yes, we had several caught trying that after they'd already run).
Just another of the multitude of things I loathed about Scouting.
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I gotta agree that some folks have ruined it over the years. There are so many rules now because of it. It's almost as strict as NASCAR. Once the cars are weighed and inspected, they are impounded for the remainder of the day, and the dads/scouts can't touch them.
I also insisted that once I was finished cutting the pieces, he had to do the remainder of the work (sanding, assembly, painting, axle polishing, wheel truing, etc) The only other thing I really did for him was set the wheels/axles up so it would run true.
He is in a fairly small pack (about 10% the size of the pack that I was in as a kid), so it was a lot more about the fun than winning.
We also had a blast making it, and I had a great opportunity to teach my son about the how's and why's of making a gravity-powered car go fast (friction, wheel alignment, center of mass, inertia, weight distribution)
It is always great when you can teach your kids some principals of science, and how to use tools, while having fun doing it.