About Me

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I have been a Cub Scout Den Leader since 9/04, Cubmaster since 2/07. I have also been a Boy Scout Troop Committee Member and Merit Badge Counselor since 2/08, changing to an Assistant Scoutmaster in June of 2011. Since spring of 2010, I have also been the Lighthouse District Cub Scout Program director, in charge of planning district-wide events. I have three boys -- Peter is a First Class Boy Scout, Nathan is a Tenderfoot, and Nick is working toward the Webelos rank. If you like this blog, please be nice and click a link.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Amazing Ropemaking Machine!



This simple machine for making your own rope was supposedly conceived by Leonardo da Vinci. All it takes is some scrap wood, a metal coat hanger, and some twine.

Make the primary base by screwing together two pieces of scrap wood. Drill small holes (large enough to slide pieces of coat hanger through) 1" apart on the upright piece. Take a small piece of scrap wood and drill similar holes 1" apart. This will be our crank. Cut three 6" pieces of coat hanger and bend a hook shape at one end. Slide the piece through a hole one the upright piece and bend it down and out so that you have an end to fit through the crank. Once all three hooks are in place, you should be able to fit the crank over the ends so that all three hooks can be turned at the same time.

Make the secondary base by screwing together two more pieces of scrap wood. Put a big hook on this upright piece, or make one coat hanger hook like you did for the first base.

Make a separator tool by taking another small piece of scrap wood and putting notches at the top and on each side. This will be used to keep the strands from twisting together until we are ready.

Clamp or hold down the base pieces. If you are using poly twine, your rope will be about as long as the distance between the bases. If you are using fiber twine, you will need to extend the bases as the rope will shorten considerably as you crank the handle. Tie the twine to the first hook, loop it around the hook on the first base, go around the hook on the secondary base, then around hook #2, back down to the hook on the secondary base, around hook #3, back around the hook on the secondary base, then back to hook #3 where you can tie it off and cut off the excess. For thicker ropes, double or triple up on each hook. For more colorful rope, using different colored poly twine on each hook.

With the twine in place, use the separator tool to separate the strands, and move it down by the secondary base. Begin cranking in a clockwise manner, making sure the strands stay separated as you crank. Keep cranking until the strands are almost ready to kink up. Tie off the end by the secondary base and remove it from the hook. Grab the tied end and slowly pull the separator tool toward the primary base. The strands between the separator tool and the tied end will twist together and form a solid rope. Keep working this way until you get all the way up to the primary base. Unhook the three strands and tie the ends together. Trim off any excess and whip or fuse the ends of the rope to keep it from unravelling.

You know you have a good Scout activity when the boys don't want to stop when you run out of time!

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Cold weather cooking - it's all in the preparation

My son, a Tenderfoot Scout, has spent the evening cracking dozens of eggs and cutting up pre-cooked sausage. Why? Because his Boy Scout patrol is in charge of making breakfast for the entire troop at this weekend's Klondike Derby, and they chose to make breakfast burritos. So, rather than crack dozens of eggs and cut up sausage outside in the cold where his egg-splattered hands would get way too much exposure to cold air, he can do these things ahead of time in a warm environment where he also has access to warm water and soap. The eggs have been cracked, whisked, and poured into a gallon jug, and the sausage pieces have been cut up and placed into tupperware. When it's time to actually make breakfast, all his patrol will need to do is heat up the food.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Pinewood Derby -- Highs and Lows

I feel bad for my son Nick, a Bear Scout in our Cub Scout pack. Really bad.

Yesterday was our pack's Pinewood Derby. We put the car together at the last minute. He sanded and painted the car body during the week, and we spent Saturday morning getting the axles and tires ready. Sadly, while trying to get the right front axle into the slot on the thin piece of his Indy-style race car wing, I chipped off a piece of wood. It didn't seem like a big deal, and I was able to get the axles into those annoying slots without much further trouble. I gave it a quick test and it seemed to be rolling okay. I put it on the pack's official scale, added weights to get it up to the maximum allowable weight of 5.0 ounces, and put it in the impound boxes with the other cars.

But that's not why I feel bad for Nick.

Race day came, and the morning was spent getting the facilities and the track set up. Nick was hoping his car would do well, but I told him that as long as we tried our best, then however the car does is just fine.

Nick's car was in the fourth and final group, so he had to wait for the other groups to run their first heat. His car was in the same group as last year's winner, so I was hoping that it would at least finish second so it would be included in the "second chance" group. The gate dropped... and while the previous champion's car wiggled down the track, Nick's car pulled away for a clear win, clearing the scoring device and crashing into the rubber pad held in place at the end of the track by the Webelos II Scouts. I could hear Nick shout out with excitement.

We ran through some cars in the open division (for non-Scouts or cars from previous years), through the first three groups again, and then back to Nick's group. The cars are placed into different lanes according to a carefully calculated algorithm so that it is as fair as possible. We have an 8-lane track (with 7 working scoring devices), so each car will run once from the left, once from the middle, and once from the right, so that any advantage one lane might have will get cancelled out. It didn't matter as Nick's car again came in first. Nick was going wild.

All Nick needed in the third heat was a second place finish or better to lock up a spot in the finals, and his car cruised to another victory. So, his car swept all three heats (as did the winners of the other three groups), and he advanced to the finals.

By now, Nick was ecstatic, running up to me every few minutes to ask if he was going to get a trophy. I told him we'd have to see, but he kept running back to me every few minutes to ask a similar question.

We took cars for a "second chance" race, ran three heats with those, and the top three advanced to the finals. This gave us a full field of seven cars for the finals.

The cars were placed at the gate for the first heat, the scoring computer was set, and the gate was lowered. It was a close race, but Nick's car clearly came in first. Nick ran up to me again and was excitedly hugging me. We had made the fastest car in the pack. Everything was going right.

Suddenly, everything went wrong. On the second heat, it seemed like the gate didn't drop cleanly. It looked like one car got a much better jump than the others, and it ended up winning the heat. Nick's car didn't even finish in the top three. I decided to let the run stand, not thinking it would be a big problem. Apparently, there was a problem. Something was wrong with Nick's car now. The gate dropped cleanly for the third heat, and Nick's car again did not finish in the top three.

Nick finished fourth overall, and although he still got a small trophy, he was clearly disappointed. He missed out on a larger trophy plus a much larger trophy that he would have been able to take home for a full year. When he won a trophy as a Tiger, he was so excited he even took it with him when he went out to dinner that night. (He also forgot it at the diner, and I had to go retrieve it that evening, but I digress.) But this was different. He was so disappointed, that he didn't even want this trophy.

When I finally got to look at his car when we got home, I noticed that a couple of weights that had been glued to the bottom of the car were coming loose. Also, the front axles were a bit out of alignment. I don't know if this happened after the first heat when the cars crashed into the padding or if these were things that happened from Nick mishandling the car after the race was over. (He actually stuck the car in his pocket at one point.) At any rate, I probably should have checked his car before the third heat, but I didn't suspect anything was wrong with it at the time. I thought the bad finish in the second heat was just because of the funky start that time. If I had checked the car after the second heat, I might have been able to fix a problem if there was one, and Nick might still have won, or at least finished well enough to get one of the bigger trophies.

I'm sorry Nick. At least we tried our best.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

No-mess Pinewood Derby car painting



If your kids are like mine, they want to pick up their Pinewood Derby car while they paint it. Of course, they'll end up with wet paint all over their hands, and they'll be wiping the paint off of the car in the process. Here's a simple trick that will make for mess-free painting.

First, you'll need a scrap block of wood. It should be bigger than the Pinewood Derby car. Second, you'll need a long screw -- a couple inches longer than the height of the block of wood (when it's laying flat). Third, you'll need a drill with a drill bit that is the same diameter as the screw, minus the screw's threads. And, of course, you'll need the car you're going to paint.

First, we'll make the base by drilling a hole all the way through the block of wood and screwing the screw up through the bottom. You will need to countersink the screw into the block of wood. That is, you want the head of the screw to be flush or slightly sunken into the wood, not sticking out. If it sticks out, the block of wood will be wobbly. If you can't easily countersink the screw into the wood, drill a slightly bigger hole right over the hole you just made, but only deep enough for the head of the screw to sink into the wood.

Next, make a matching hole in the bottom of your car. Find a thick part of the car so that you won't damage it or go all the way through. Drill a hole (using the same drill bit as before) that goes about 1/4" into the bottom of the car.

Apply downward pressure as you twist the car onto the screw sticking up from your base. Once you have the car secured on the screw, your car should be ready to paint!