Maybe Lots of Pictures On This One...

Ever since I was a young Cub Scoutling I had marvelous fantasies to make the ultimate Pine Wood Derby car. It was a little tricky to do in the house I grew-up in as our tool options were somewhat limited. I built some "interesting" cars growing up using a hack saw and some duct tape. Cars with special skills and victorious looking paint jobs that would make Napoleon Dynamite proud.

Several years later with some woodworking experience and a garage full of tools, imagine my thrill when I learned that we would be having a daddy daughter derby in our ward that both my daughters would be involved in! And since Bubba loves ALL things cars, we decided we couldn't make the girls cars and leave him out. That meant I got to build not one, not two, but three cars!

So thrilled was I and so grand were my childhood dreams that it was a little hard for me to relinquish some of the control of the build to the childrens. Still, we had a lot of fun getting these cars to the end result. I procrastinated a little, so the paint jobs are more rushed than I would have hoped.

Less words. More pictures...

We went on the www and they all picked out the style of car they wanted. I decided to mock the cars up first, so I could make mistakes on those before starting the real cars. I made two blocks the exact dimensions of the actual pine wood derby cars.

Here are the mock-ups...






Once I figured out how to approach them, I got to work. Here are the real deals, mostly finished and read for paint...








First coat of primer...



Second coat of primer...







Third coat of primer...




First base coat of color...






Taped-up for flames and stuff...




Second coat of color...


Taped pulled to reveal the pink on pink flames...




Taped pulled to reveal the red on black flames...



Green to blue fade...



And here they are, ready for the races...








Bubba's hot rod didn't participate in the competition, but was pretty fast in all the non-official races he ran it in.

Jasaroo's green to blue fade racer ran the middle of the pack, lot's of 2nd and 3rd places, but sure turned a lot of heads.

Powpow's pink on pink flames was a fast car and ended up taking 2nd in the whole tournament.

Derby for life!