Pinewood Derby - Open competition

A year ago in April, it was pinewood derby time and I posted pictures of the cars made by my two sons.
Now I thought it time to post a few cars that were made by me.

At the time I moved into the Cubmaster's job, I wanted to encourage the dads/parents to allow the Cubs to make their own cars. If they wanted to get competitive, they should race each other and me.
I began whittling cars in 1982.

This "Coakster" was my first effort. The back end says, "recycled to save energy".
This is made with two blocks glued together. pull-tabs were a new thing at that time and have undergone changes over the years.

In 1983, I carved a bobsled out of the block and fastened on little plastic figures of a bobcat, wolf, and bear. (There were no tiger cubs in those days).

I'm not sure where that car is now but i think the animals were removed for kids to play with.

1984 was the "Top Banana".

I added scrap wood to the end to give some height.

Yes, and I stole a "Chiquita Banana sticker from a real bunch.

In the fall of 1984, I took the "old" Woodbadge course and returned home a beaver ... an "All-gnawing Beaver" at that!

No trouble figuring out what to carve that year. I carved the beaver separately and glued him to the log. This was a fast car.

The back end says, "Nice gnawing you"!

In 1986, my car was an E-racer.

Not a lot of hard work to this one.

In 1987 I was carving ball and chain neckerchief slides for the "Cubmaster's Challenge"
I will tell more about that in a later post.

This car is the "missing link" I couldn't cut the links all the way through and make it work but the ball in the cage turns with the vibration of the wheels.

Sweet Victory"

In 1988, I got down to the end of the wire and needed a quickie car. I took a block of wood and cut it to the same size as this candy bar, saving the wrapper.

All I had to do was put the wrapper on the wood and add the wheels.
Of course, some neatnick in my house kept tossing out the opened wrappers so this car took a lot of eating to complete.

I have always been a bit amazed at the size and speed of Japanese cockroaches. (gokiburi)

This "Go-car-buri" has cane antenna and was quite fast.
His other name might be the "Car croach".

The antenna are left-over basketry reed.

"S-Car-Go"  ( "S" for Scout) was made in 1990

It was made from one block of "Hinoki" wood and hollowed out to remove the excess weight.

"A Jump Ahead"  was carved from two blocks glued together.

The antenna are made from coat-hanger wire. This car has had a lot of handling over the years and so the wire is pretty beaten up.

1991 , and I think he won that year.

1992, The "Mobile Richard" was out for a whale of a ride.

I think he was also a winner.
His water-spout is made of nylon fish-line.

The last car in this selection is ...
Slow and Steady Wins the Race.

1993 ... and it was a very fast car.
I couldn't add a tail to the rabbit and meet the length requirements so I glued on some fine fluffy feathers.
They have since been ravaged by moths.


As one might imagine, after 12 years of cars, my contribution to the races had become somewhat of a tradition. We opened the competition not only to fathers but to mothers, sisters, Den Chiefs, and anyone else who wanted to try their luck at beating me.

Each year It was a real challenge to come up with a new idea. I solved the next years with cars representing the year of the oriental zodiac. Those will be my next post.