Auto Biographies: Pinewood Derby Tales (November 8th, 2023)

Let's start with the coolest thing first: Esther's car's splendid slo-mo wreck:

One wheel finishes the race.

Her car was banged up. Both Enoch's and Esther's cars first heat was together, and they crashed together at the end of the track, knocking off a couple of Esther's wheels, and breaking part of the tail off of Enoch's "Perry the Platypus". We experimented with a long straight axle for Esther, rather than nails. The biggest drawback is that little hubs were required to keep the wheels on, so when the cars would bang together at the end of the track, her hubs would pop off. After her second heat, she couldn't find one of the hubs. She didn't know what to do, and as her next heat came up I said something like, "Well, let's race it without the hub and hope the wheel doesn't fall off!"

It fell off. And we laughed and laughed and laughed watching the slow motion video of the wreck, one of her wheels finishing the race.

Her car was cute, and not slow even though she didn't do too much to the wheels. It was also heavy, heavy wood, and we actually had to lighten it rather than add weight.

     Esther was close!

Joshua won the derby as the fastest car. He put a lot of work in the polishing of the axles, getting the weight right, etc. But, he painted first and had Roger Anderson help him pour molten tire balancer metal (whatever it is made out of) after, so it messed up the look of his car. But it was fast, and he won!

        The worst angle ever ... but Joshua wins again!

Rachel had the cutest bathtub one could imagine. She didn't want it fast, which was very wise, preventing it from banging around with other cars at the end -- I'm sure it would've messed up her beautiful set-up! She made all the tub pieces out of clay.

                                                                                                Rachel's gentle finish.

Enoch's car was quite fast and fun. I was sad his tail broke after the first race.

         Enoch won this heat!

Andrew came up with the idea of pounding my "brick" with a meat-tenderizing hammer to give it the right texture, and helped paint it, too. The hose connector on the end gave the right weight, so I just stuck it in the hole.

My "brilliant" idea was to do three wheels instead of four. The fastest cars raise on front wheel off the track just a bit to reduce friction. So, I figured only three wheels would be best. The three wheels I had where very, very fast. But, my car would fishtail like mad coming down the track, almost hopping off it. It ended up being extremely inefficient. Dang.

                                                                                 Yikes! But Ben loves it.

We had a good time. Here are some more photos, and my experimental video of Esther talking in slow motion!