Derby Talk

You make 16 fake pocket knife kits for your Bear cubs to use to practice on in order to earn their Whittling Chips.





I made these out of a scrap of 2x4. I cut the grooves in the knife body using my table saw; offset the cut 1/16th from center, and ran the cut both ways to get the grove wide enough to hold the blade. The knife blades are about 1/16th wide. I drilled pilot holes in the knife body for the screw (otherwise the pine splits) and then drilled a slightly larger hole in the knife blade so it pivots cleanly. The washer is used so the screw doesn't protrude out the back side of the knife, not because the screw moves at all.

The finger slots (where you reach in and pull the blade out) took about 10 seconds with the sander attachment on the Dremel.

All things considered, I'm quite happy with the way these came out. I got this idea from a scout mom's blog. She made fake knives out of cardboard and put red lipstick on the blade, then had the boys practice opening and closing. If they got any lipstick on their fingers or hands while doing that, they had cut themselves my not using the knife properly.

Not sure I'm going to let them put lipstick on my nice wooden knives though...

I left the kits un-assembled except for my demo model. The boys will get to put their own knife together at an upcoming den meeting. All they need to do is put the blade in the knife body, line up the holes, and insert the screw. Should be fun!

Very cool. Scale it up some, put wheels on it and you'd have a cool PWD racer too!

Oh, that would be fun! I think our rules prohibit moving parts on the cars (other than the wheels, of course) so the knife blade would not be able to move in and out. But it could be an interesting car nonetheless...

drathbun wrote:our rules prohibit moving parts on the cars

If the blade moves with a screw, you couldnt tighten it down so it wouldn't move. Or lock it in place for the race.

I showed the prototype knife to some of our other pack leaders last night, and they all want one... unfortunately I made only enough kits for our boys at this point. Guess I have an excuse to get back into the garage some more! Yay!

The Derby is never over for me. It is my year around hobby. I teach the Physics of the Pinewood Derby to Nursing Home and Assisted Living residents as we build cars and we then have a race after all our cars are built. We follow the rules of my District and use the BSA kit. I've built many tracks and presently have the two latest ones. They are equipped with Micro Wizard timers and lots of flags and things that I've acquired over the past 27 years so we have everything we need. Also, I always have one scout and parent each year who is very enthused about racing and we start building his car in June. We will be heading to District races March 17th this year. It has been a wonderful, inexpensive hobby, and I love it as much today as I did when I fell in love with it in 1985.
Cheers
Bill

That sounds like a great hobby, and I'm sure you're very appreciated by the folks you work with.