Pinewood Derby

It was W's first pinewood derby as a cub scout last Friday.  And of course, Nini didn't want to be left out, so I had two cars to design instead of one.  Beorn took care of the cutting and rough sanding and I got them smooth and painted.  Since we had a can of black gloss spray paint and a can of red gloss, those were the colors I used.  Then we had to figure out WHAT to do with black and red cars....

After much debate, Nini decided to let me turn her red car into Minnie Mouse, or the "Minnie Mini Mobile", as she dubbed it.  I taped off the bottom and made a tape "bow" and then sprayed on the black.  The ears are made from black sculpey and hot glued on.

The dots were easy - just white craft paint.  I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

...And then, literally right before we walked out the door, Nini dropped it.  One ear broke in half and both needed to be glued back on.  Argh...


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W had chosen to paint his black... so we opted for a Toothless, from How to Train Your Dragon.  I looked online for some ideas, but didn't find much, so we based it off of W's Toothless from Build-a-Bear.  He dubbed it the "Toothless Terror".

It was a plain black paint job, some painted eyes, plus some black sculpey molded to make the ears, wings and tail.  I actually ended up making several sets of wings, because after making (and gluing on) the first set, I actually checked the width limits.  And of course, the gorgeous stretched out wings were too wide.  So, I worked on making folded back wings...

The eyes make the whole thing work... and they were just some yellow-green craft paint (the black iris is from letting the base color show through) and small white dots at the edge of the irises (a very important touch when painting eyes).  The red spray paint took care of the prosthetic tail and some more white paint made the scary viking symbol.

I was very happy with how it turned out...

...and then of course, on the way there, W fell and crashed the car (and himself) quite hard.  Despite my warnings about no running (and no more damaged cars) he tried to climb over the barrier at the school (to race his sister) without using his hands (carrying the car, after all) and did a major face-plant.  He didn't care about his bleeding face, just that Toothless might be ruined.  The look of fear on his face was heart-breaking.  We went back home to clean W up and make the repairs.  Cosmetically, Toothless was ok... but his alignment suffered and with a VERY loose wheel (and no time left) there wasn't much that could be done.  I really think it affected his racing.


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We did finally make it to the race, not nearly as late as I feared.  (W's car really did look good there in the line-up.)

It was hard to wait for the registration and busy work to end and the race to begin...

...but the popcorn did help.

W raced several times...

...and if force of will could have made his car go faster, he would not have just come in second in his races (I just love that intent look on his face, already watching the finish line.... you could FEEL him pushing his car with his brain!).  But considering one wheel was threatening to fall off, he tried to be ok with not making the finals.  He just told himself he'd win for best paint job. He'd been pretty much planning on it as soon as he saw his finished car.  He was more than a little surprised when they announced someone else as the winner.

But it was all ok in the end... because guess who won BEST OF SHOW??  He even won a hot wheels car.

After the "real" racing was finished, they let the little kids race... and Nini got to try out her Minnie.

Even the Red Bird Racer came out of retirement for the occasion.

A big THANK YOU to all the scout leaders (and the Andersons) for all their hard work putting this together.