Pinewood Derby

Tuesday night was the pinewood derby. Our ward does a different derby each year so the boys get a chance to do all three while they are in cubs. So, while this is Ben’s third year in scouts, it was his first pinewood derby. He (and Nate) made an awesome looking car. It was Han Solo in carbonite. Ben took Elise’s suggestion and named it “Car-Ben-ite”. When the cub master was announcing the boys' cars, he said “Let’s hope it’s not Han Slow-lo.” Turns out, it was. They raced four cars at a time, and Ben took third place in every heat. His car finished 12th out of 18 overall. He was disappointed, but he got over it. I think he inherited mine and Nate’s competitive nature. We’re all working on not taking things so seriously.

They had an open track after the boys were done, so we let the girls build their own car to race. It was actually a bit faster than Ben’s but didn’t fare as well in the standings, finishing 7th out of 8 cars in the non-cub-scout races. Luckily, they didn’t care about winning. They just loved that they got to make a car of their own.









I wish I would have taken more pictures of Nate and Ben working on Ben’s car. It was quite a process. They used an action figure we bought on eBay to make a mold in play-doh, and then poured hot wax into it. Nate made about 100 passes with the table saw to make a little recess for the wax in the wood block. Once the wax was hardened, they melted the edges on our griddle to get it to just the right size to fit. Then there was spray painting, printing labels for the sides (using images from the actual carbon freezing chamber from the movie), polishing the axles, and melting down lead sinkers to get the weight to exactly 5.0 ounces. All of that work for a 12th place finish (and some good father/son memories).


The girl’s car was very last minute. Nate picked up the kit on his way home from work on Monday. He let the girls pick a shape and cut it out on his scroll saw. They sanded and painted the car Monday night and threw on the stickers about 15 minutes before we left for pack meeting. They did a great job working together and I did a great job letting go and not micromanaging their project. Okay, so I did touch up the windows a bit when the black paint bled through the masking tape, but that was all.