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Pinewood Derby Part I

Posted by Doug Wed, 09 Mar 2005 03:20:00 GMT

Last night was our Cub Scout den meeting. We all started on our Pinewood Derby cars together. This was Josh’s first time to do anything remotely close to “wood working”. When I first talked to Mark, the host for the den meeting, he said he had some saws we could use. I misunderstood that he had either a scroll saw or a band saw or something. No, he just had a hand coping saw and another hand saw. At first, Josh didn’t want to use the saw. He wanted me to do it. I think he was a little nervous about either hurting himself or not knowing what to do with it or something. I got the groove started with the saw. I had him put his hand on the saw while I pushed and pulled so he could get a feel for the level of force needed. He mostly got the hang of it and did about half the cutting. I really think he enjoyed it.

The car has some pretty jagged cuts on it. We’ll need to do quite a bit of sanding to get it smooth. But, it really is his car. In fact, I tried to steer him to a particular design I thought would both look good and race well. He was pretty sure what he wanted. I had him draw it several times. Each time was pretty much the same, so we went with it. I’m glad we did. His was much simpler to cut out by hand than what mine was.

I was really proud of Josh at the Den meeting. Of the three boys, he was pretty much the only one to stay focused on the car. The other two boys were off playing most of the time, but Josh stuck it out and kept working with me on the car. Like I said, he did about half the sawing and the design was pretty much all his.

The actual race is on March 19. We’ve got quite a bit of work to do before then. I’ll keep you posted.