Pine wood derby part 2

So the derby went awesome and all of the participants had fun. Sweet cars, check out the plain block of wood on the left, just put that in the back of your mind for a minute. Boy and girls had fun, although one girl did not really want to race but she kept on winning so she had to keep racing, funny! We had about 35 people bring cars to race some legal some not so legal. This is about the only mutual activity we had where we had nonmutual folks show up from the ward and a couple from other wards.

Here are the cars, yes cars I made. I was relatively sure that I would have people show up that needed cars to race. The pickle/watermelon/zukini/cucumber car was the fastest car that I made. You can put your vote in for what you think it looks like. I had fun making them.

So check out this sweet ride, yeup challenger, yeup General Lee. My friend and scoutmaster made this and believe it or not this is one of the legal cars. And did you notice it has working doors.





My two buses are my favorite, I made the double decker for me to race.



Yes, I actually built little bench seats to put on the top of the double decker.



So I was really impressed with how well this cars ran. They were competitive with full BSA legal cars that were similarly built. So remember the car on the left, you know the block of wood. Our second counselor brought his son that will be 12 in a month to watch. I didn't have any more built cars for him to race but I had a couple of unassembled kits. So we took the block, put on the wheels, and let him race. He beat some very well built cars including my watermelon, the bishops sweet blue demon, and one of young women's leaders car(who took second). That's right, he won it all, a plain block of wood wins. He's not even in mutual yet. Fun time. It was a blast. Thank you Jeff for loaning me the track and to Mom and Dad for the use of tools and stuff, I will explain the stuff later.

pinewood cars

So my priests and I thought it would be really cool to have a pinewood derby race for combined mutual one night. I got to looking and the cheapest I could get a car kit for was $2.86 on line, for 50 cars that would be around $140. That is kind of pricey for a mutual activity. So I decided I could make them for cheaper, both in price and quality....hehehehehehe. He is what I came up with, Regulation size cars cut down from 2x3 lumber, 3/16th fender washers for wheels and 1" roofing nails for axles. These seem to roll pretty good on the floor, almost as well as my official pinewood derby cars. We will see when I get them on the track.

Here are my 50 kits ready to hand out. Each car was weighed and marked, the weights ranged between 3.3 ounces and 4.1 ounces. I grouped them in 4 categories, 3.3 ounces, 3.7 ounces, 3.9 ounces, and 4.0 + ounces. The heavier ones I will hand out to kids that want to do some carving. The wheels, spacers, and axles weigh 1.5 ounces. The kits cost about $0.82 per car, that makes it with in my price range for an activity.

Here is one of the cars assembled before body selection begins.

This is my demo car to show the young women and young men.

I will let you know how it turns out.

I suck

I know, no pictures how lame. I have been horrible at taking pictures of what I have been up to lately. June I spent a week with my Varsity scouts hiking the 3 tallest peaks in Arizona, Escdilla, Baldy, and Humphrey's. They were some tired boys when we were done. Two of the three hikes involved hiking in snow half way up the trail. I have spent some time working on my street bike. It is getting closer to getting done. I am working on some wiring problems before I tear it down. We have finished our classes for foster/adoption and are waiting on a reply from the state. While we are waiting I have been putting doors in our house, crazy boy says what. Didn't you have doors before? Yes, but back in June of 07 right after we bought the house I took them all out and my wife has been very patiently waiting for 3 years for new doors. Now all I have to do is remodel one bathroom and replace that door, and put in base boards, and paint, and put in some cabinet doors, and do some land scapeing, and finish the shop, and put the addition on the house, and work on the garden........... you get the idea. I will try to get some pictures on here soon.

Garden time

So Kari wanted a garden, so with out telling her I went and built her one. At our house if you want a garden you either have to fence it in or hope you can kill all of the bunnies, birds, and lizards. So I came home from work Wednesday morning last week and built this for her. She helped me finish up some of it and lay the walking stones.

Getting Started

Here we go, I go? It was kind of a pain to do this part by myself.
Framing done.

Kari laying pavers and walking stones. Check out that sink! It is the one I broke trying to put it in my house. Now we have a matching set on in the kitchen and one in the garden. The sink base is from a treadle sewing machine.

I still need to put sunbrella fabric on the top for shade/ top closure.

We hope the animals will leave our veggies alone, if not I will have to go get a pellet gun!

Garden time

Kari really wanted to do a garden this year, and she wanted to start it from seeds. Here are her starters for corn, peas, carrots, radishes, green beans, an some other stuff. These will hang out in here for a few more days until I can get the garden bed ready and chicken wired to keep the rabbits out. She started this when she planted a watermelon seed with her Sunbeam class.

Painting Terrorist

Kari was painting our master bathroom a month or so ago, I forgot I had these pictures. she was doing some over head sanding and wanted some protection.

So she made her own, I have safety glasses and dust masks but apparently that is not good enough for her. Notice the sweet swim goggles. Maybe she just wanted to make sure absolutely no dust ever got into her eyes. I love my wife! I laughed so hard when I saw her.

KARI ROCKS!!!!!

Mountain Man Roundvous

Is that how you spell Roundvous??? Any way, I had the opportunity to go to Mtn Man this year, I forgot to bring my camera and totally forgot I had a camera on my phone so all I have are prep pictures from home. Black powder rifles, black smiths, trading post, tomahawk trowing, climbing tower, team wall, mirror signaling, archery, Indian field hockey, pellet guns, blow guns, fire starting, throwing knives, and the best butchering and field dressing game! yeup you heard that last part right and Varsity team that wanted to had the opportunity to clean and prep and game animal, Rabbit, duck, chicken, quail. The leader in charge killed the animal and then had the boys give hands on help. AWESOME!!


Kari making my Capote, or Mountain man Jacket/coat. We went and got two old blankets from Goodwill, one was an electric blanket so I had to remove some wires.

The hat I also got from Goodwill for $5 and reblocked/reshaped it to look like a cowboy hat.

Check these bad boys out, The smaller one is the size of a large stake knife and the big one is.. well... lets just say ridiculous huge. I made these for the Mtn Man Roundvouz. All of the boys that came up wanted to play with the big knife. I had many offers to trade for it but did not take any of them. Maybe next time.