Formula 1 Pinewood Derby Car
In 2008, our Cub Scout pack added an Adults and Siblings category to our Pinewood Derby. After three years of TRYING to keep my interference in my kids' cars to a minimum, I finally got my own car to go off the deep end with...and WAY WAY off the deep end I went, smiling all the way!
It's designed roughly following a bunch of pictures of Formula 1 cars I found on the web. It meets all the Pinewood Rules. The main body piece is cut and carved from the given block of pine and the wheels are in the original slots. The engine cowl is a seperate piece of pine from the cut off parts.
The little wings and radio antennas and mirrors are various bits of thin wood, metal or plastic, all carved/bent/filed/sanded by hand and glued into little carved slots on the car. Then it's lots of modeling putty and sanding to fill and smooth it all out.
The decals are homemade using a clear decal paper that can be put through a laser printer. I dreamed up a bunch of "sponsors" and a name for the driver and went to town with all my fonts. I got the official graphics from the BSA website and shrunk 'em down.
The front and rear wings are made from a thin peice of aluminum from the hardware store. I found various ways to bend them and then cut out the piece that fit my needs. The front wing was one bent piece that I sliced three strips from. The end plates are wood with slots carved in to recieve the metal parts...then epoxy and putty and sanding again...
Because we have an aluminum track with clearance between the guide rails, I could let the wing go lower in the middle. That wouldn't work on a track with a full raised center guide. That's the only element that pushed the Pinewood size and clearance guidelines.
Of course, there isn't much car left after all this carving. I had to cram a LOT of weight in somewhere to get up to 5 oz. ... and, or course, I HATE to be able to see the weights. My regular weights (steel dowels) were going to be way too big to fit in anywhere. Time to apply a little engineering ingenuity.
I consulted a list of metal densities. My steel dowels are denser than the weights sold for the cars, which are now lead free. Lead is 50% heavier than steel, but lead is getting rarer and was still going to be big. Let's see...what's higher on the list...gold...platinum...uranium...all wonderful choices! Tungsten... double the density of steel...now I'm on to something. Turns out the shop I work for had some pure tungsten welding rods we didn't like and, of course, LOTS of used up tungsten carbide cutting tools.
So there are several rods laid into the bottom and the driver is actually a rounded off bit of carbide cutter and I'm up to 5 oz. no problem!