Wooden Car

Last month Cameron and I participated in his Y Guides Pinewood Derby. It was tempting to take the kit and run with it but I resisted and made sure Cam was involved in everything that didn't involve high-speed power tools.

He sketched out the shape that he wanted and I cracked out the coping saw. Here's what we had after the first cuts. He wanted a curved cockpit - I wasn't really sure how to do that and so I roughed it out with a flat wood bit. This made a big mess of the cockpit and made it difficult to sand out later.

We spent the rest of the weekend sanding the front and back curves. I did a lot of shaping with an orbital sander, and Cam and I worked on the cockpit with a dremel tool.

The cockpit was finished with a special high-tech sanding stick - sandpaper taped around a pencil.

Cam picked a really slick metallic turquoise color. I think we ended up putting three coats on to cover the wood grain, followed by decals, followed by a couple coats of clear gloss.

Here's the car before we left for the races:

Of course I had spent a lot of time weighing the car, polishing the axles and wheels, all the standard Pinewood tricks. But those photos are classified. (And deadly boring. I'm losing you right now as it is.)

We did well in the races. The tournament was double elimination, with the kids grouped by grade. We were in a very fast first heat and came in third, moving quickly into the elimination bracket. We won our second heat going away though, and were one heat away from the finals. However, we came in a very close second in our semifinal heat and bounced out with the fifth or sixth fastest first-grade car.

That night, as I was getting Cam tucked in to bed, I told him how much fun working on the car with him. I told him that I knew he really wanted a trophy and that I was sorry we hadn't quite gotten one. He looked up at me and said "It's okay, Dad. I just had a fun time seeing all the other cars and winning one of my races."

I know it's good for kids to learn that You Don't Always Win. But when he said that to me I couldn't help but wonder if there was something I could have done to make our car just a little bit faster.