Wooden mixer rack

I needed a rack that would mount my mixer on an angle as well as allow airflow under it for cooling.

This rack is made of 1/4 inch basswood and the cross member slats that support the mixer are rabbeted into the front and rear supports for extra strength.  A small  lip was added to the front edge to keep the mixer from sliding off.

Wooden Pool Triangles

This year for my brother's birthday I made him a cherry and maple pool triangle.  The three sides are made from a single blank of cherry with a swoosh of maple glued in as a laminate.  To see how this is done, see the wooden bookmark post on this site.  The three corners are equilateral triangles and rounded recesses are cut into each so that the balls touch each other and rack solidly (lesson learned from the Mark I version of these...).  The rack is finished with 7 coats of nitrocellulose lacquer and polished to a mirror finish just like on the perfect guitar finish found elsewhere in this blog.

Pinewood Derby Hershey Bar and Bus

Here are the pinewood derby cars that Zac and I made this year.

His is the Hershey Bar and mine is the Webelos School Bus.  He saw a Hershey bar car in an issue of Boy's Life magazine last year and he has been planning on building one all year.  The car is super easy to build because there is no paint, just some aluminum foil and a Hershey's wrapper.  Spray adhesive was used to secure the coverings and about 3 oz of weight had to be added to the car to make it 5 oz.

The Hershey Bar Car turned out to be really fast and won the Pinewood Derby.  I think that having all of the weight in the rear and having a low center of gravity helped make this happen.  My personal opinion is that the axles and wheels are most important part of getting the best speed possible.  Well polished and true axles with good graphite as a lubricant is a must.  Our pack does not allow increasing the wheel base but I am told this helps and running on three wheels helps reduce rolling resistance.

My car is the same as I usually make each time I am leading Webelos because it is the last year that the boys will be racing pinewood derby cars and I have the bus as a keepsake to remember them by.  The photos are from their yearbook and all of the details on the bus are printed on decal paper.  The bus is the opposite of the Hershey bar because it needs to be hollow to make it weigh 5 oz.