The daughters made your work look pretty good. Getting the kids and Dads together on things is to me the most important part. Keep it up as I am sure you will.
No pine wood derby?? Bummer. If you’re not aware, it’s a Boy Scouts tradition for many many years. Little kits with a block of wood, some nails as axels and plastic tires. The kids are supposed to shape and paint the car body and once they’re done you race them down a track against the other Scouts. At least way back in the day, it was an all day affair with weigh ins, multiple race heats competing, trophies (but not for everyone…I suspect that has changed). Our Pack always paired it with a BBQ lunch. Good times!
Ryan/// ~sigh~ I blew up another bowl. Moke told me "I made the inside bigger than the outside".
We had great fun with the Pinewood Derby when my sons were in Cub Scouts. I even built a track for our pack. In '07, we had a fund raiser for breast cancer research. My car came in first. It beat the red-orange car by .008 seconds. Take a close look at the wheels. Mine's the yellow one. I used my brother's mill and lathe.
Well, I never cheated for my sons. They owned what they built. For my oldest son, who cut out his car with a coping saw and painted it with a brush (it looked like crap), he was ecstatic when he got second place. The winning car had about 12 coats of hand-rubbed lacquer (looked like a block of obsidian) and his dad machined the wheels in the machine shop at his workplace. His eyes were bugging out when he saw his son's car win by about a centimeter! Some kits are faster than others. Son's car was also underweight, so the guy running the event hot glued a washer on it. 🙄
As for graphite, that's still the go-to, though there is allegedly an oil that works better. I'll stick with graphite, personally.
First thing I remembered was to cant the axles slight so only three wheels would ever be touching. Reduced the rotating drag by 25%.
When I competed, Dad just handed my brother and I tools but kept quite on any "tips". We both did ok, but no where close with the guys tapping dark energy. 🤠
It's that time of year again. I've got to cut my boys' cars out and all they're giving me is a squiggly line down the side that's supposed to represent the profile. I'm trying to let them do as much as they can but they're just not giving me much to work with right from the get go.
