Pinewood Derby Workshop - Calling for Volunteers on 1-13-24 from 1PM to 4PM

Always best to stick to the District rules IF there’s a District race to worry about, but most of them in Circle 10 don’t have one.
I ran races for a long time for many different Packs and some District races. I saw everything from no rules, word of mouth Pack traditions, and simple basic rules like these all the way to a 10 page set with requirements for calipers at inspection time.
Some require only graphite or white Teflon for lube and others just say nothing wet dripping on the track. The worst rule I even had to enforce running races was the one about ‘4 wheels must touch the track’. Trying to help a Tiger/Work and their parents to get 4 wheels touching was a big challenge.

I taught my son to use a bandsaw, dremel, spindle sander, and drill press using Pinewood Derby as the project. Then we learned together about axle polishing/bending and why a rail riding 3 wheels touching car will almost always run faster than other cars.

I guess there’s a reason my name on Talk is PinewoodNut. :smiley:

Needles to say, but I’ll save the 13th to come help. Let me know what I can do.

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I hear ya… as someone who had to check for 4 wheels touching flat at the pack level before the race, it was rough. None of them purposely went to 3 wheels, but it’s just hard to ensure it when just using hand tools. It was obvious that it was incidental in all cases.

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I look forward to seeing you.

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I’ll plan to be there to help as well. Are you going so far as to have weights (tungsten cubes, steel or lead cylinders, etc.) on-hand to help inform the cutting requirements for each car? Also, might be a good idea to ensure the scrollsaw is operational, with new/extra scrollsaw blades onhand. Finally, are you going to have gram scales onhand (to help determine weight/wood removal parameters?

Here’s some cars we’ve raced at the District level, as well as at the Mid-America in Omaha, NE.

Nevermind…the photo upload function appears to be kaput for the moment.