C'mon, Pearl Harbor Day!

My life is so working.

I just got an email from a Cub Scout Den Leader to schedule his den for a workshop December 6 or 7. This is before scouting even gets started for the year in the elementary schools. I love pinewood derby . . . look at the discipline involved.

You have to start with a block of pine (actually spruce, pine, fir, or larch . . . some of the white pines are so soft you can crease the block with your thumbnail; the Douglas fir is so dense, you can cold-cock a running horse with the block). This car can max out at seven inches long by two and three-quarters wide (including the wheels). The height doesn't matter unless you are terminally into speed. Then you go for thin, and you use high-dollar tungsten weights.

Depending on the Pack rules, you may or may not relocate the wheels from the pre-sawn slots. Otherwise, dork around with the wheels at your own peril. You can't machine them to reduce tread/track contact or to reduce their mass (lighter wheels begin turning faster from a stop).

You can use lead (Pb), except, since California [I think it was] determined that people shouldn't eat lead weights, almost everybody uses zinc (Zn) to add mass. Or you can spend the money and spring for tungsten (W). This is so cool. Look at the specific gravities . . .
Zn ---- 7.05
Pb ---- 11.35
W ----19.62
OK, kids, let's use our thinking caps . . . which element gives you more mass for your ducat? Uh, by a factor of almost 3, for sweet Pity's sake. You can really shave a car body down thin with that. And, uh, which mechano-bod has to have all this drag-inducing wooden frontal area just to carry the largest volume of mass? This is so cool. (Did I already say that?)

And then there's wheel lubrication - no liquid lubricants . . . says that right in the rules. Now, of course, I have a moral/ethical question. If a hypothetical racing team of a dad and a lad spray a penetrating aerosol on the (linoleum nail) axles so that the axle is wet, push that through the bore in the wheel a couple of times from each direction, then clean the wheel with a pipe cleaner three or four times till it's dry, and, finally, wipe the axles with a very clean cloth till they're dry - and never lube the wheels again for the life of the car . . . is that a liquid lubricant. In the immortal words of Anna's friend the King, "'Tis a puzzlement."

Last year over four hundred racing teams came through my shop and built their cars using my bench-mounted tools. That's because Grampa, who even had a metal lathe in his garage so he could repair his own lawn mower (we're talking about grinding and milling cylinders here, folk) or car, died and gramma sold all his stuff, and his son went to college and got a mindworker job instead of a handworker job, and his son never even saw a hand tool, much less machine/bench tools . . . and since shop in school is only for socioeconomically challenged kids who aren't smart enough to get mindworker jobs . . . well, that's why I have my shop. Actually, that's the excuse for my shop. Really, I just like to uncle and grampa everybody; Lord, but that's fun.

I have a bud at the end of the block, across the alley, named Jim. His boy and mine joined Cub Scouts at the same time. The kids are in college now, but Jim and I still race each other at our old Pack's Derby. We'll work for months (I've been working on a tank for over a year) on one of these silly-assed little wooden race cars, then saunter nonchalantely down the alley, and say, "Hey, man, look what I just whipped up in the shop this afternoon." We both know he's lying through his teeth . . . but, dammit, maybe he did just bang that out. "looks good, bud; how's it run?" (Evokes Kicking Bird's query of Dances With Wolves' pipe, doesn't it.)

Anyway. I think I'll finish this tank. The turret spins. The commander's hatch opens and closes. The gun tube elevates and depresses. I have entrenching tools and picks in a little cage on the engine comparment. There are shielded headlights, a tow chain, hollow exhaust pipes . . . and I'm fabricating (non-functioning) tread out of two weights of paper, glued one atop the other and separated where they are visible from beneath the fender skirting.

It's either that or grade papers . . .