Pine Derby Car Completed

I guess this one could be filed under modding but I don’t have a modding section so this works.

Anyway my youngest son is in the cub scouts and they have the Pine Derby coming up tonight actually and I’m new to all this and I was just shocked by the Pine Derby Car kit as it’s just a a plain block of wood.

I now wish I had taken pictures of the original black of wood, but I found a stock one of the kit and the contents:

Yep, it’s a rectangular block of wood, nails and plastic tires and my eight year old is supposed make a car of it to compete in their Pine Derby.

So I had to get to work on it.. I should have taken more pictures but oh well..

Here’s partially done and painted without clear coat.

Yes there’s a big hole in the front, that’s for an adjustable weight kit. The cars are supposed to be no more than 5 ounces but all the wood I cut off dropped it down way below that so I had to add it back in and an old weight kit from a broken gaming mouse worked just fine.

The paint I used was actually a textured spray-on rubber coating. I forget the brand name right now, but it gives it a texture and rather cool looking appearance and makes it durable.

I printed out just black self-adhesive mailing labels for the windows and cut and shaped them to the sizes. The dragons on each side were also printed on mailing labels and carefully cut out with an x-acto knife then I had to use a magnifying glass to color them in with a blue very fine point marker. A Sharpie actually..

Here’s a few views of the completed car with clear coat on it. Yes I even painted the screw to match that holds on the weight kit. the weight kit was originally black, but I painted it silver and clear coated it as well. You can just remove the screw and adjust the weights as need be and I think it look like an engine in there, kinda cool I think.