Pinewood Derby - Building the Pinewood Punk - Part 2

There's only a week to go to race time and as usual I will probably finish my car late the night before. I am making good progress, however.

I am building a steam punk themed racing car.As of the last posting about the car I had finished cutting its rough shape. Next, I sanded it with some medium grit paper to get rid of the saw marks and smooth out the shape.(Fig. 1)

Figure 1 - First Sanding

Then I began to cut out and shape the wheel covers. These pieces took the longest time to make. After figuring out the smallest diameter the covers could be and still not touch the wheels I drew the shapes onto 3/8" thick poplar and cut them out roughly using the band saw.(Fig. 2) Then I refined the shapes using a sanding attachment on my dremel tool which was attached to a dremel routing table. This took a couple of hours but in the end I sanded the covers down to half circles with a thickness of just over 1/16".(Fig. 3) Finally, I cut some accent pieces out of 1/4" poplar using the band saw and hand sanded them to the proper shape before gluing them to the wheel covers. I also cut a small piece off of the front wheel covers so that the front of the wheel will be exposed.(Fig. 4)

Figure 2 - Rough Wheel Cover Shape

Figure 3 - Final Wheel Cover Shapes

Figure 4 - Accent Pieces Added

Next, I used a 1" forstner bit to rough out a hole for the spare tire well. The tires are a bit larger than 1" in diameter so I finished the opening by hand carving and sanding.(Figs. 5,6)

Figure 5 - Spare Tire Well

Figure 6 - Tire Well Completed

The last thing I worked on this day was to hand carve a small recess in the front of the car to accept the headlight.(Figs. 7,8) I bought a small bowl shaped piece of wood at the hobby shop for the headlight. The 1935 Duesenberg Meteor that this car is patterned after featured a one headlight design also, which I thought was one of the coolest features of the car.

Figure 7 - Headlight Recess Cut



Figure 8 - One Central Headlight (So Cool !!)

Figure 9 shows the progress so far on the car. It also shows the piece of craft wood I bought at the hobby store to be the driver. I am almost done cutting on this thing. Next time I will begin the finish work. There is one week to race day!!

Figure 9 - Progress on the Car