Tag Archives: Cub Scouts

Moral: never go to a Pinewood Derby with a car with a sticky wheel. I thought we could get away with it, after the epoxy spread to the wheel from where I had applied it to hold the axles on the wood. I turned it a few score times and applied powdered graphite to the axle and the tread in hopes of making it slippery enough that it would at least slide quickly. It came in 66th, dead last. It not only lost its three heats, it never got all the way to the finish line, but slowed and stopped about two-thirds of the way down the track. Next year, when Mr. B. is older and doesn’t have to rely on dumb old Dad, he should do better.

Have to get our Pinewood Derby racer weighed today and leave it with the race officials for tomorrow’s competition. We wound up using some tungsten putty, after all, gluing it to the bottom of the car with epoxy. That way, if we’re a little over the maximum of five ounces, we can shave some of the putty off. Something tells me we won’t be so lucky this year as last when we won third place. But we’ll see.

Last year, our first race, we got all complicated. Bought tungsten putty to stuff in drilled holes in the body, polished the nail-axles, sanded the plastic wheels, lubicated with powdered graphite. Even bought a scale to weigh the car. Then got to the official weigh-in and discovered it was too light. So used their hot glue gun and lead weights to bring it up to maximum allowed: five ounces. This year Mr. Boy did more of it by himself, including the polishing and sanding and picking out a decal body surface instead of using paint and clear nail polish to make it shine. Might still use the nail polish, but we blew off the tungsten. Going to wait until the weigh-in and use the free weights and remember to space them out on the car’s rear third, for fastest possible running. Last year Mr. B. took third place. This year?

Mr. B. decided to stick with his design for last year’s car, which unexpectedly took third place in the pack’s race. But he couldn’t resist decorating this year’s car with a full-body decal of red and yellow flames topped off with lines of menacing skulls. Very second grade. At least it will save painting and inhaling the fingernail polish we used last year to make the paint sparkle. Now that the wood is cut–this year by one of the den father’s with a band saw–we need to enlist a family friend with a belt-sander to help him sand it smooth, and polish the axles so the plastic wheels turn faster. Like last year we’ll go into the race not expecting to win anything. But you never know.