Pinewood Derby 2011

We just recently had the annual Cub Scout Pinewood derby race.  Rhett really enjoys it, and we had a great time working together on his car.  Last year I'd helped him quite a bit, but this year I told him he needed to do pretty much all of it.  First, he needed to decide on a design.  He has gotten into NASCAR a little with his friend Jeremy, who is a major Jimmy Johnson fan.  So, of course, Rhett is also a major Jimmy Johnson fan, and wanted his car to look like Johnson's.

To make sure we captured the essence of Jimmy, we looked him up on the internet, and printed off a few pictures of his car.  Then, we did our best to draw a similar outline on the car.  Next, it was to the workshop.  We don't have a band saw, which would be ideal for this job, so I had Rhett drill about 20 small holes with the drill press along the "cut line."  Then we put the car in a vice to hold it steady and he used a coping saw to cut it out.  This left a pretty rough piece of car, so it was back to the drill press, but this time with a drum sander on it so that he could smooth it out.  Next we went to finer sand paper, and doing it by hand.  After a lot of sanding, the car finally looked like a car, but still need the wheels, the paint job, and to be properly weighted.

Rhett wanted the car to be blue, so we took a trip to Lowe's and got some blue spray paint and clear coat.  What we learned the hard way (don't know why we didn't remember it from last year) is that spray paint takes a long time to cure.  We like to put 7-10 coats of paint and a few of clear coat to give it a glass-like sheen, but when you do that, and don't allow each coat to cure properly, you end up with a soft finish.  WE didn't let it cure properly, so we had to handle the car very carefully as we put the wheels on and weighted it. This messed up the finish a little, but it still looked pretty good.

Finally, race day came.  Rhett was really excited!  I got off work early, and we went down as a family to support Rhett.  He had won last year, and was pretty excited about winning again.  I tried to make sure that he didn't get his hopes up too much because winning once is hard.  I wasn't expecting it to happen again.  He checked his car into the pit, got his "creds" and went down to the end of the track with the other scouts.  Then, the races began.  To our surprise, his car did really well, and he ended up winning again.