Pinewood derby

hunter24605 · Jun 1, 2022

My grandson has gotten a good start to his pinewood derby car…(I may have helped just a smidge) the wedge shaped end is the back. they take this serious nowadays. Stick on weights, special polished axels with negative camber, graphite lube and trued wheel hubs, and even test tracks from home tuning. I hate to say it, but the kids with single moms or those whose parents don’t have the means to invest $200 in a $10 car, don’t have a chance, anymore. But I guess it beats spending all his time playing video games and on social media.

3 Meter Para Bellum · Jun 1, 2022

Ha ha, yeah it sounds like some people really get into it, but I do like seeing kids doing something hands on in the real world for sure. Me and my brothers used to take making paper airplanes pretty seriously. Spent hours making them and testing them off our second story landing. Some of those planes were quite elaborate, most adults would have serious trouble making the intensive ones we made when we were twelve. I tried making one of the easy ones out of our more complex models we used to make when I happened upon an old box of our stuff and I couldn't even get that one to work!

I guess I've lost my skills.

hunter24605 · Jun 1, 2022

3 Meter Para Bellum said:
Ha ha, yeah it sounds like some people really get into it, but I do like seeing kids doing something hands on in the real world for sure. Me and my brothers used to take making paper airplanes pretty seriously. Spent hours making them and testing them off our second story landing. Some of those planes were quite elaborate, most adults would have serious trouble making the intensive ones we made when we were twelve. I tried making one of the easy ones out of our more complex models we used to make when I happened upon an old box of our stuff and I couldn't even get that one to work! I guess I've lost my skills.

Ours was the Testor cars and planes with the Cox engines. we would tinker and re-design and try to up the “horsepower” on those things. I still remember one of my first ER trips was by using my finger to spin the planes prop to start it, didn’t quite pull back fast enough ..

DrMike · Jun 1, 2022

He appears to be off to a great start on his car. Nothing wrong with helping our grands with their first ventures. He'll learn through participating and watching.

NYDAN · Jun 1, 2022

DrMike said:
He appears to be off to a great start on his car. Nothing wrong with helping our grands with their first ventures. He'll learn through participating and watching.

DrMike says it very well. Kids learn through instruction and participation with a mentor. Grandfathers make great mentors.

salmonchaser · Jun 1, 2022

My dad was an engineer He loved ”helping” us build our pinewood derby cars. Well done Gramps.

gbflyer · Jun 1, 2022

Neither of my sons ever finished less than second place. I don’t think there was a single car built by a kid in all the years we did it. Hahahaha.

KinleyWater · Jun 2, 2022

hunter24605 said:
Ours was the Testor cars and planes with the Cox engines. we would tinker and re-design and try to up the “horsepower” on those things. I still remember one of my first ER trips was by using my finger to spin the planes prop to start it, didn’t quite pull back fast enough ..

I'm fairly certain the sorts of things I did at that age are unlawful now. Nothing bad or harmful, but standards of acceptable societal conduct have certainly differed.

Good on your grandson for getting into making things with his own two hands. Making things is something the world could use more of.