Pinewood Derby Template – I have designed and built what I believe to be an awesome Batmobile. I will try to give you step by step instructions below.

Class 1: This was my car that I prepared for the open senior races at my son’s Pinewood Derby event. This design will almost certainly meet all size and weight rules and regulations that apply to Pinewood Derby scout cars. This is very difficult to make for a child of this age.

Pinewood Derby Template

Disclaimer 2: The build steps below are in the order I went through them, but I noticed several times that I had steps out of order. So read and understand all the steps and try not to make the same mistakes I did.

Pinewood Derby Car Kit

I always start with a hand drawn template. You can download the template here and try to design the Batmobiledesign yourself, or you can download the image below and print it on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and it should be close to actual size. The Batmobile design I came up with is wider and taller and even taller than the standard piece of wood that comes with the Pinewood Derby car kits. So I had to make my own wood for this build.

I started with some 1×6 pine boards I had lying around in my shop. It is possible to use hardwood, but it will make the carving process very difficult.

I split the board on my table to see that there were 2 lines that were 2.75 inches wide. You really don’t want to build a Pinewood Derby car that is more than 2.75 inches wide or that can cross the path of the car closest to the track and the event organizers might not even let you race it.

Then I found the best three pieces of the fabric that were 9 inches long and cut them using my hacksaw.

Fast Pinewood Derby Car Body Canopy 8 Less Than 15 Grams

I then carefully placed a thin and thick strip of wood between them and joined the three pieces together. If the glue is not done correctly, you can end up with holes that can come off when carving. If this happens, you just need to peel off the glue again and stick the thing together.

And now here’s the wood we’re going to use to start carving the Batmobile. I should have taken a picture of this block of wood next to the standard one that comes with the Pinewood Derby car kits to show you how big this block is.

Now we want to transfer the silhouette of the Batmobile to the block of wood. I wrote with chalk on the back of the paper template, but you can also write with pencil, it looks better on this color stick. Another option is to cut out the silhouette completely and then trace around it.

After writing on the back, just place it on a piece of wood and keep it there…

Pinewood Derby Car Body

When you’re done, you’ll see that the chalk has transferred to the wood. In retrospect, a pencil would be easier to spot on this light pine.

Then cut out the shape using a band saw. That first bandsaw cut doesn’t have to be perfect. We’ll be doing a lot of shaping later, so these cut zones can be tricky. Fortunately, I didn’t cut all the way to the lines with that first miter saw and that left me with a lot of leeway and flexibility later when I was doing my design work.

Here is the first rough cut of the silhouette above. You can see how I didn’t cut all the way through the lines.

Here’s something I did wrong. I wish I had done it before I cut the rough silhouette. I used a lot of tapping with my table saw to create a slot in the bottom of the race car. The wheels protrude from the bottom of the car about 1/2 inch, so I made this slot about 3/8 deep. So the wheels will keep the suspension parts off the bottom of the road about 1/8 of an inch. This car design hangs low which makes it look very cool.

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How big did I make this slot? The actual width of a typical Pinewood Derby car is 1.75 inches.

Just to make sure the width was right, I put a standard Pinewood Derby wood car in the slot and it fit perfectly.

Now that the silhouette is done from the top, it’s time to cut the silhouette from the side. Since there is no flat wood on the side of the car, I cut out the silhouette of the side and placed it on the side of a block of wood…

After you cut the side silhouette using a band saw, the wood will look like this. It’s starting to take shape a bit.

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Now, before we start digging into places to remove logs that shouldn’t be there, we need some ideas to analyze. So I moved all the lines from the silhouette side to the block side.

Then I started seeing where the lines crossed and intersected and decided which parts of the wood needed to be removed and which to stay.

Below is an example of the silhouette shape left in the center of the car which is the jet engine intake. But on the other side of the jet engine’s central intake, the car’s wings must bend down in a smooth arc. So, using a small hacksaw, I cut a rough wing shape towards the center of the hood where the jet engine should sit in the original silhouette shape. The car is sideways in this image, above the car on the left, the front of the car is coming towards the camera.

Then I cut the hood to free up a piece above the fender that didn’t want to be there.

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Here is a better view of the car in its normal condition. All the wings have been cut and the central jet engine intake remains a feature of the original silhouette. This is not the final shape of the wings or the jet engine. We will take small steps from the structure and eventually we will get there.

To get large pieces or to get unusual shapes that cannot be done by hand, we will use a large drill. Below he shows me to start digging the car on one side of the top dome.

A chisel can be used to get a little closer to the final shape. But the chisel is still difficult for the final formation.

Here are the results after digging and after pruning. It’s still rough. But the whole situation is starting to show.

Grand Prix Pinewood Derby Car Design Plan With Cut Out

I forgot to take a picture of the tool I was using, but after drilling and hammering, I did some shaping using a speed cutter bit on my Dremel tool. This image shows that the structure is becoming more defined now.

The photo below shows what it looks like after doing this molding step on both sides of the canopy, as well as some molding on the jet engine to grip the hood area.

Then I kept jumping around doing less and less. You’ll want to grab some pictures from the internet to use as a reference so you can see which areas need to be removed and shaped as you go.

Now, I cut the wheel axle slots this time, but I really should have done this step back when the block of wood was solid and flat. Since mine was no longer wide and square, I had trouble matching the axles, which made my car not want to go straight, which kept it from winning many races during the Pinewood Derby. Oh! nice. I had a really nice car there so that’s a big win in my book!

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I used a hacksaw to cut the axle slots. I used a square to mark the slots, but mine ended up not fitting. It is also important that the sockets are perfectly horizontal and that both the front and back are the same depth. Not easy to do when cutting by hand. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.

After cutting out the slots with the hacksaw, I cut close to two and then used a chisel to cut the pieces which gave me a good start on the wheel holes.

To cut the holes for the circle wheel, I used the flat bit on the hand router. Be careful going up

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