Building a DIY Pinewood Derby Display Shelf

Many of us have had kids go through Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby competitions. This is when boys (ostensibly) use a wood block kit to create cars for a gravity race.

A good time is usually had by all, even if some over-involved dads sometimes forget that it is the children who are expected to build the cars and race them!

A lot of creative effort goes into the cars’ creation, whether they ultimately go fast or not. In our family, we had quite a collection of cars built by all the kids thanks to competitions at corporate events.

It seems like a shame for the kids’ hard work to go forgotten after the race. So I scanned the interweb for a display solution. I spotted Etsy vendor Warforged Products had a shelf for Hot Wheels-sized cars that looked nice, so I asked about a kit for the larger Pinewood Derby cars.

Thankfully, Warforged was able to quickly adapt the design for the laser-cut wood kit for the bargain price of $37.

The documentation that accompanies the kit makes sense after you’ve put a kit together, so I found that looking closely at the finished product was helpful because there aren’t that many pieces.

The wood panels interlock so the floors slide into notches in the sides and center support, while those parts slide into notches in the back panel. It is just a matter of getting the assembly order correct. I test fit everything, then disassembled it and went through the assembly process again, applying glue to all the contact surfaces the second time.

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The laser-cut wood has a cool rustic look, with bare wood framed by edges blackened by the cutter. For the Pinewood Derby cars, however, I thought the style is a little rustic, so I opted to paint the pieces before assembling them.

I used black for the floors and back and green for the sides and divider. This does seem a little on the dark side, so maybe consider using lighter colors. I’m thinking phase two of this project might be to add some LED lighting. For now, I’m happy to have the family’s creative car designs on proper display.

And if you don’t have Pinewood Derby cars, this shelf will also work for 1/32 scale slot cars. And of course, Warforged has its original 1/64 scale Hot Wheels-sized shelf, which looks so cool that I wish I still had the collection from when I was a kid to display on it.