I had some 1/2" PVC pipe from another project. We marked it in 1" intervals and then used the drill press to drill the holes. We did some testing; the newer style wheels with the coned hubs required a 17/64 drill bit, and the bigger hubs on the older wheels took a 9/32 drill bit. We were really careful to count and drill exactly the number of holes by size that we needed, or so I thought. Turns out that we had one wrong and I had to go back and drill one smaller hole out with the larger bit. Here's the results after our drilling and cutting on the PVC pipe. The two boxes are sorted into new versus old style wheels.
In the original topic (linked above) someone else posted some pictures of what was essentially the same idea we had, but their implementation was much better looking. They had checkerboard pattern on the PVC slide, and they had painted the wheel letters. We intended to do the painted letters, but with me being out of town for a conference and the Derby coming up that Saturday, we unfortunately didn't get a chance to do that. In any case, here's what our final product looked like:
And from the back / inside:
We did not bother to trim back the hub, as I felt like it would help the slide stay up better. We talked about it, but in our testing it went on fine and seemed to hold well, so we decided to leave the hub intact.
Next, the glue. We tried basic craft glue, and that didn't hold. We tried some Elmer's style glue, and that didn't hold well enough. In the other topic epoxy was mentioned, but before we tried that I got the idea to try PVC cement. We're gluing PVC pipe to another piece of plastic, so it seemed like a good idea. That way we didn't have to worry about mixing epoxy which would also save us some time. We made five prototypes and checked the glue an hour later, and they were good. That meant we were ready to go into mass production.
I applied the cement to the inside of the wheel:
Daniel then was responsible for making sure the wheel was turned upright, so that the BSA letters would be at the top of the slide, and then he pressed the PVC pipe down into the wheel, making sure that it contacted the cement.
We did discover that PVC cement would melt the wheels!
We were getting a bit careless, trying to work faster, and I dripped some of the cement onto the side of a wheel. When I tried to wipe it off, it left divots in the wheel! After that we made sure not to let the cement come into contact with the outside of the wheel.Here is a very proud Daniel with his box of completed neckerchief slides. We handed out one to each scout in the pack as they came to pick up their car from the garage at the end of the race. Because we did not have all of the cubs show up with cars, he had enough left over to give one to each of the scout leaders. Not only that, but we host the Derby for a smaller pack in our area that doesn't have their own track, and he even had enough so that all of their boys went home with a Derby tie slide as well!
So thanks again to 5kidsracing for providing the extra wheels. This was a fun project, and I am extremely proud of Daniel for coming up with the idea and carrying it through.
