2005 Pinewood Derby Cars

In case you're not familiar with it, the Pinewood Derby is an annual Cub Scout event, where the boys' fathers all make a car out of a block of wood. Then, there is a big event where everyone pretends that the boys made the cars, and they are raced by rolling them down a track. Below are our two cars for this year, along with last year's Tiger Cub car for reference. The Tiger car won the "Most Creative Design" award for its age group, so it's a tough act to follow.

Why do we have two cars? Well, in addition to a division for each of the ages of boys, there is an "Open" division for fathers, friends, and relatives who want to make their own cars. Last year, my daughter noticed that one of the cars in the Open division was a pink Disney-Princess themed one, and she decided that she wanted to enter a car this year. It should be obvious which is hers. If we were into that kind of thing, we could probably get "Girl Scout competes in Boy Scout Pinewood Derby" as a human interest story in the newspaper or somewhere, but we don't plan on attempting that.

So, who made what? Well,...

• The designs are solely by the kids.
• The wood-cutting is by my brother-in-law.
• The base painting was mostly by my wife in 2004 and by me in 2005.
• The trim work was by me in 2004 (for the face) and by the kids in 2005.

So, it's a family affair. Last year, we noticed that they didn't seem to care very much who actually won the races, so I don't think we're all that concerned about the cars being under-weight. Last year's car was maybe 10g under the weight limit (which most people thought was very light), but this year's cars are currently even lighter.