Scouts Greater Christchurch Zone sources materials and assembles Pinewood Derby car kits and wheels for use by Scout groups across New Zealand. Our aim in making the kits available is to make holding a Pinewood Derby easier for leaders so that more youth can learn and have fun at a derby. The kits are designed for maximum accessibility. By pre-drilling the axle holes, the wheels can be pressed in without without needing a drill or special sized drill bits, and we include templates and instructions to guide the building process.
Pinewood Derby wheels are imported from the USA and pine blocks are dressed and cut to order by a local timber yard. Putting the kits together takes two large working bees.
Block Drilling
We hold the first work day at a local Menz Shed where we set up 8 drill presses to create two production lines for drilling axle holes in the wooden blocks. In 2025 we made about 3000 blocks – that was 12,000 holes to be drilled.
Standard pinewood car axles holes are not symmetrical end to end, so we have different jigs for each corner of the block. Setup takes a while to get the jigs all aligned and testing done to ensure we get consistently accurate hole positioning.
Once setup the drilling takes about 3 to 4 hours (averaging 1 block done every 4 seconds!).
Kit Bagging
Once the blocks are drilled, the next working bee is to bag up the kits. This task takes 20 to 25 people.
In order to keep the price as low as possible we source a portion of the wheels and axles in bulk packs and these need to be counted out and bagged up in sets of 4. Lead weights also need to be counted and bagged up with the safety labels. Labels are applied to the blocks.
Then all the components are stuffed into the zip lock bags along with the rules and template pages. Kits are then sorted and boxed up storage until we need to ship them out.
To motivate the many volunteers required to assemble the kits the zone makes a small margin on each kit as a fundraiser to offset the cost of zone events including the Christchurch derby.