Pinewood Derby Car Stand

So a few months back I was toying with the idea of building a Pinewood Derby Display Shelf.  My thinking was that it should hold a car for each year of the Cub Scout Experience.  I looked all over online and finally found something that I really liked, the problem was the cost, at $30 each it just wasn't a feasible den project, plus they seemed to no longer be available.

One of the dens in our pack builds an individual stand each year for that year's car, and that's great, but who has space for 5 stands, I wanted something that could hold all 5 cars either sitting on a dresser or hanging on the wall.  I also wanted a project that they'd do as Tigers or Wolves so they'd have empty shelves they were eager to fill, a project that can double as a retention tool seemed like a good idea.  As a child lays in bed contemplating if they want to continue on in scouting I want those empty shelves to remind them they still have more cars to build.

Below is the prototype I made up with some scraps I had lying around my makeshift shop.  It was only 3 cars high but it allowed me to come up with some general dimensions to create my design.

So I figured out my ideal dimensions, and then spent a few hours on-line and in-store at the local home centers deciding on what materials would work best at the lowest cost and developing my materials list for screws, paint, etc.  I need materials for 9 finished projects.  The cost per project worked out to be just under $10.

What I ended up with were four 8' long kiln dried 2x4's and two 2'x4' sheets of 1/2" MDF.  If I were making any more than 10 it would pay to get a full 4'x8' sheet but that would have required using the truck and moving the saw outside to rip down, so I'm glad I only needed 9.

The MDF sheets were cut down to 9 1/2" wide by 24" high pieces as the back panel.

The 2x4's were cut to 7 1/2" long blocks.

I then cut 1/4" off the side of each block to square them up. The scrap makes for good fire starter.

I then cut a little more off the other side to make them 2 3/4" wide.

   

Once the sides were squared up it was time to cut them to height, I wanted them to be 1 1/4" high to account for the 1/2" notch and still have 3/4" of material to fasten to.  This whole thing could have been done using 3/4" pieces and fastening 1/2" thick strips to the top.  I'm not sure which method would have ended up being easier, one is more cutting, one is more assembly.

I ran each piece through the saw 4 times with the fence at 1/4" and the blade height at 1/4" to create a notch for the wheels.

Now that all 360 cuts had been made, I then sanded each side, especially the ends.

Now that I had all of the shelves cut I made up the template for the back panel.  There is a hole at the top to allow it to be mounted on the wall, there are 3 holes to attach each shelf, and the top corners were dog eared for aesthetics.  Once the template was made up I gang drilled the back panels on the drill press for the 144 holes.

I made up and positioned a makeshift fence for the drill press to drill pilot holes in each shelf.  This will aid in lining everything up when the boys assemble them.  The fence kept the holes centered top to bottom on each shelf.

  

Once these 135 holes were drilled the parts were ready for hand sanding and painting.

The back panels were painted first.

Then the bottom shelf (Tiger).

The next shelf (Wolf).

  

The middle shelf (Bear).

The WEBLOS shelf, I did it as the pants of the uniform, or if you do one shelf red it could be the green in the Weblos Colors.

I did the AOL shelf in Khaki like the uniform shirt but you could make this the red shelf of you wanted to do the Weblos Colors.

Everything painted and curing before assembly of the example.

There are the screws we'll be using, they're long enough to grab but not so long that it takes the boys forever to install them.  They're a T-20 drive so I had to gather up all my universal screwdrivers and torx bits, but they'll be a lot less slippage than trying to use philips head screws, they also have a type 17 point so they'll go in easy, especially with the pilot holes I drilled already.

This is the back of the assembled unit with the screws installed, they recess into the MDF easily enough for a nice smooth back when it's done.

Here are some shots of it assembled with some of the cars that I've made on it.  The sticker of the pack crest I had printed by Sticker Mule in anticipation of doing this project.  The top point covers the hole I drilled for hanging it on the wall, but you can easily poke a screw through the sticker if you want to mount it.

  

Balance Beam

So we needed to do the balance activities to finish the Running With The Pack adventure for Wolf, and while we could have just dropped a piece of wood on the floor I took the opportunity to make the balance beam that my kids have been asking for.

I took a 2x4 and cut it to 6' long, then cut three 1' sections for support and 2 lengths of 2x3 for additional support.  Glued and screwed everything together so that it would be nice and strong for a bunch of kids jumping around on it.

Painted the bottom blue to seal it.

Painted the top yellow.

  

Then masked off the yellow in the center and painted it blue to get a blue and gold striped effect.

Stanchions and Plastic Chain

So last year at our Pinewood Derby, and then at our Blue and Gold, and then at the Mall Show, I kept wanting to come up with some better means of crowd control than cones and rope because while they did work to an extent, they were very easy to knock over or push out of the way.  Plus they weren't Cub Scout themed.  This is what I came up with, and will be building more of.

The finished product.

 I had decided on 6mm yellow plastic chain, as it's highly visible and relatively light. The next step was to design the stanchions.  Originally I wanted to utilize PVC pipe with a threaded flange so that they could be broken down for storage but that was going to get expensive.  We could have bought the ready made plastic stanchions for the same price it would cost to construct them.

Then I stumbled upon these 2x3 balusters at Home Depot and they were just the right size.  I still wanted them to be able to be broken down and considered utilizing hanger bolts and wing nuts to attach them to the MDF bases I had made, however I was running out of time and using what I had on hand won out over tracking down the right hardware.  I ended up using 5/16" x 4" lag bolts.

The edges of the MDF bases were rounded over with a router, as was the top of the baluster.  Once everything was assembled it was all sprayed blue.  The last step was to attach the chain to the stanchions and for that I ended up going with 1 1/4" white safety cup hooks.  These are the perfect size to hold the chain and offer a certain amount of deterrent from just unhooking it to walk through.

Holiday Neckerchief Slide

For our holiday pack night we made holiday themed neckerchief slides.

I've been asking friends and parents to save their tape cores since last year with this project in mind.  Unfortunately we didn't have enough so I go a piece of 1" schedule 80 conduit from the local electrical supply house and cut it into slices that same size and diameter as the tape cores.

I had already stumbled upon the perfect paracord on Amazon.

We wrapped the paracord around the tape core (pipe slice) in neat tight rows and then tied the two ends together with a square knot on the inside.  This part was a bit challenging.  We then clipped off the excess and fused the ends together.  These contrasted well with the gold wolf neckerchiefs the next week when Santa came to our pack night and handed out pinewood derby car kits to all the boys.

Games Tigers Play

We are now working on our "Games Tigers Play" adventure, so this week's project will be to make a game. We are going to take our inspiration from a project my father used to build for us when I was a Cub Scout. He used hardwoods he had lying around his shop, ours won't be quite so fancy. We are going to make a wooden tic-tac-toe board that uses golf tees.

I waited until the last minute again, so in order to get Blue and Orange golf tees I had to make a trip to Golfsmith and deal with the length that they stock colors in, they're a little longer than I would have liked, and we'll get back to this later.

For the wood I was able to find a 5/4 in. x 4 in. x 8 ft. Select Pine Board at Home Depot, I then cut it into squares.  It was a true 5/4" thick, but only 3 1/2" wide, so the squares were 3 1/2" x 3 1/2".

Next I set up the table saw to score the grid for the tic-tac-toe.  I believe I had the fence at either 1 1/8" or 1 1/4" in order to end up with perfect squares once the edges were routed, we'll get to that next.

Once I had scored all the blocks I was ready to route the tops, and then round over the bottoms.  If I were going to do this again I would reverse these steps.  I ended up getting some tear out while routing because of all of the corners I now had after scoring them.  If I had routed them first and then scored them this shouldn't be an issue.

Once routed and scored you end up with 9 nice squares.  You can see the chipped corner in the picture below, hopefully reversing the routing and scoring steps will eliminate that.

Once they were all routed it was time to start drilling holes.

I made a template and marked each one, then drilled them on the drill press.  Honestly once I was doing it I think that centering the hole on each square by eye would have yielded as good if not better results that marking it with the template.  If I were going to do more of these, especially a large batch, I think I would make a jig for the drill press to line up the block for each hole.  I sized the hole to fit the golf tee snug enough so they wouldn't fall out, this posed a problem I'll discuss later.

I drilled them all the way through, because I wanted the boys to have to do something other than just sand them at the meeting, plus I had to buy longer golf tees than I wanted so the extra depth wasn't an issue.  I ripped down another piece of wood to 1/4" thick and cut 3" x 3" squares.  I then drilled 4 small diameter holes to make it easier for the boys to nail them on.

Adding the 3x3 squares to the bottom with the edges rounded over creates a similar profile to the top.

The finished product with the TIger Cub colors.

All of the materials and supplies packed up and ready to head to the meeting.

So here are some things that we realized once we went to assemble them at the meeting. Not all golf tees are identical.  While all of the orange ones seemed to be pretty uniform, some of the blue ones fit the holes and a lot of them didn't.  I had sized the holes using an orange golf tee, it never occurred to me that golf tees might not all be a uniform diameter shaft, especially two bags of the same size from the same brand.

While we're on the topic of the golf tees, these were 2 3/4" long tees, that's all I could get in the colors locally.  They are too long, they break fairly easily, especially when they get stuck and you're trying to pull them out.  After comparing them, I determined that my father used to make his with 2 1/4" long tees, but they do make even shorter ones, they also make plastic ones, which I think would probably be more uniform in diameter.

In the hours of golf tee research I did following this project I actually found tees that I want to try for a future project.  They're called step down tees and look like push pins, I think they'd work great for these projects.  They seem to make them in plastic as well, but the color choices seem more limited.