I was den leader for five fifth grade boys who were second year webelos cub scouts. These boys were around eleven years old. All five have earned the arrow of light. Here are a few of the projects and activities. For the craftsman badge the boys made whirlygigs and birdhouses and other crafts. They used power drills, clamps, screwdrivers to build these things from kits. This is a bluebird house with a 1 9/16 inch hole centered 2 inches from the top. The front is 5"x10" hardwood (so woodpeckers don't enlarge the hole). It pivots outward from its bottom edge for easy cleanout. The roof is 7"x10" redwood. The back is 5"x14" with 3/16" mounting holes inside and at the bottom. The bottom is 5"x2" with two 3/8" drain holes. The sides have a right angle at the top front and have 10" front, 8" top, 12 1/4" back, and 3 7/8 bottom edges. Two 3/8" vent holes are at the top. We have raised western bluebirds, plain titmouse, and clif swallow families in this type of birdhouse.

For the engineer badge the boys assembled this small trebuchet catapult. It will throw cork balls across the room. They made the block and tackle from a kit of parts and measured the mechanical advantage using a fish scales to measure weights. They put together several simple circuits that contained switch, light, battery, and the one shown that included a motor driven switch (from an old floppy drive). They also built several kinds of bridge structures.

Over the past two years the boys earned many patches for overnight camping, whittling knife safety, rimrover hikes, nature observation, night time hiking and star gazing, orienteering with a compass, overnight on the Pampanito submarine, campsite cooking, and pinecar derby. This represents a lot of fun.

Here are the pinewood derby cars for the last two years. They performed respectably but didn't win any significant distinction. The axle nails were turned and polished on a lathe to get rid of the burrs. My son designed, sanded, painted, and applied the decals. The rules are so restrictive that there is not much one can do but pay close attention to axle smoothness, absolutely parallel axles at right angles to the car, and slightly smooth the wheels. Also add weight up to five ounces, and add graphite. The rest is luck.

I gave a demonstration at a campout on how to make fire with a fire bow. The fire drill shown here has started about five fires by now. Balsa wood is the only wood I have been able to get a strong ember from. Other wood produces lots of smoke but no glowing ember. It takes a great deal of focused energy drilling into the balsa while the smoke rolls out and a black grit forms in a pile in the groove beside the drill hole. More frantic bow work yields a glowing ember on this pile. Gently blow and surround it with the fluffy cattail down to catch the spark. More blowing and the down bursts into flame which will start the pile of fine shavings of cedar kindling. The boys thought this was pretty cool.

A special motor project was reserved for the boys that had completed the required badges of citizen, fitness, and readyman. Each boy got the kit shown here. The bearing posts were brass rod hard soldered to brass cylinders which served as sleeves for the 1/8" steel shaft to rotate in. The rotor has a brass cylinder to hold the neodymium iron boron magnet hard soldered crosswise to the steel shaft. The flux path for the electromagnet is made from 1/4" square weldable steel.

This formed the C shape for the boys to wind 400 turns of red 24AWG magnet wire armature on. They glued the magnet in the rotor, screwed the switch to the base, and assembled and glued the blue insulating shrinkwrap tubing and the brass commutator pieces to the rotor shaft. They cut the four copper wire "brushes" and pushed them into their tiny brass sleeves and then into the holes in the wood base.

I used a butane mini torch and silver solder to do the hard soldering for the bearing posts, rotor, and electromagnet core. Don't heat up the magnet! Glue it in afterwards. It was too tricky for the boys to do the soldering and adjusting of the brushes so I did that. The commutator at right shows the four brushes, one of the brass commutator sleeves is always positive, the other is always negative. The two brushes in the middle switch from being +/- to being -/+ as the rotor turns. This switches the polarity of the electromagnet to keep the motor running. It will run backwards or forwards, whichever way it is started. A piece of small monofilament CA glued in the crack keeps the brush from shorting out the battery when the shaft is exactly on the boundary. The motor has to be started with the rotor in the position shown. The boys had a lot of fun and all their motors work. A NiCd 7.2V battery can deliver enough current to run the motor quite well so long as the four copper wire brushes are making good contact.

Snow camping, the best experience in scouting. Snow Travel.

Summer camp merit badges. Archery, canoeing, shotgun, sailing. Service projects for the middle school that supports our troop. Its all good.