Our annual Pinewood Derby^® event is in January.

   Cub Scouts, with the help of their parents, build their own cars from wood, usually from kits containing a block of pine, four plastic wheels and four metal nails to serve as axles. The finished car must use all nine pieces, must not exceed a certain weight (usually five ounces), must not exceed the official length, must fit on the track, and must only be powered by gravity while on the race track.

   Other than these basic design rules, the Cub Scout is able to carve and decorate the car as he chooses. Weights are often added to the final design to bring the car to the maximum allowable weight; coins, washers, glue-in lead pieces, and melted lead are common ways to add weight. Cars typically vary from unfinished blocks to whimsical objects, to accurate replicas of actual cars.The fastest cars tend to resemble low doorstops, with weight at the rear. Wet lubricants for the provided nail axles are not allowed at all -- and while many Packs do allow for dry graphite lubrication, our Pack does not.

   The race event is run in heats, giving every car a chance to run on each lane. Our Pack owns and uses a six lane metal track for the main event, and and older wooden track with four lanes that is used just for fun. The racers can be grouped with others from the same rank (Tiger Cubs, Wolf Cubs, Bear Cubs and Webelos), or they may compete against the Pack as a whole.

Did You Know?

• A fast Pinewood Derby^® car can reach a speed of nearly 20 miles per hour. Pretty good for a little block of wood!
• If a Pinewood Derby^® car racing down the track was enlarged to the size of a real automobile, it would be speeding at more than 200 miles an hour. That’s fast!
• The first Pinewood Derby^® was run in 1953 at the Manhattan Beach Scout House near Los Angeles when Cubmaster Don Murphy introduced the idea to Pack 280C.
• Over the years, Cub Scouts have built close to 100 million Pinewood Derby^® racers. That’s a lot of cars!