Pine Wood Derby Fun

Our Ward Primary hosted a Family Pine Wood Derby party. We decided that not only would it be fun, but we would also get the chance to meet some new people. I had no idea how much time and effort it takes to make a pine wood derby car--or in our case a train!

Since Dylan is such a train boy we decided to make a Thomas the Tank Engine for the big race. Here are some pictures of the building process:

We started out with a block of wood

Rob worked his magic and used a large round pole for the front part of the train.

After all the pieces were glued together Rob began painting. He started with the blue and then taped over the parts that he wanted left blue. Here he is cutting out windows:

On goes the black paint

I did the red paint the day before the race because we were quickly running out of time.

The day of the race we glued on some of the finer details...

and added the final pieces.

Rob did a great job of putting the wheels on straight.

And here is the final product:

Not too shabby if I do say so myself!!

Dylan's train with the competition!

So before the race we talked to the scout guy who was in charge and he checked out our train. He said that it felt a bit light and he didn't know how it would run. He ran it down the track before the race and it didn't even get the the finish line! How disappointing! We taped a few nickles to the back of the train and then it ran just fine.

Here is a video of the race (Pause the play list on the right before watching the video):

Our train was in the very first race of the day and it came in dead last--you could say we were the first losers! Hey, at least we were first at something!

Needless to say, we had a fun time, we meet some great people and Dylan has a new train for his collection--it was worth all the time and effort!