Making a Balloon Powered Racer

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:09]Well, hey there guys and welcome back.

[00:00:11]On this week's show, we've got a balloon powered racer.

[00:00:23]Well, I'm ridiculously excited about this week's show. I don't know why. It's just a silly little toy powered by a balloon there. A few days ago, my wife sent me a photo of some 3D printed race cars that were uh powered by balloons and she said, "Is this a show idea?" And I thought, "Can we do that out of wood?"

[00:00:44]And hence the project came to life. So I sat down on the computer, I designed a pattern, and we're going to test it for the first time on today's show. So, without further ado, let's head over to the bench and I'll show you what I've got in mind for this one. Well, this is the pattern as it sits currently. Um, it's not completed cuz it hasn't been tested yet, but what we have is four wheels. These are actually 3/4 of an inch in diameter. I'm going to be making mine a little larger today. I'll get into that after. And then we have three sections of the body. two outside sections which will be cut from 3/4 inch thick stock and one interior section cut from quarter inch thick stock. Now the stock that I've chosen for this is pine simply because it's easy to work with. I have lots of scraps of it and it's light. We want a light racer. So this is what we have. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach one pattern of our outside piece of our vehicle onto the outside of one of our 3/4in pieces.

[00:01:58]And I'm going to adhere the interior pattern, this 1/4 in thick stock pattern to our quarterinch piece. And uh I'll show you what to do from there. Well, at this point, we're going to head over to the scroll saw just with our 1/4 in piece. We're going to treat this part here as an interior cut, and we're going to cut out just this section. Do not cut the profile of the piece yet. Just this center little cutout.

[00:02:30]All right. So, there is that center piece removed. So, you may notice here that I have our patterns cut off at the front and lined up with the front of our blanks. All of these blanks were cut at the same time. They're an inch wide and 4 in long. That way, they're all going to line up. So, with this cut, I can peel the pattern off of this. We're not going to need this pattern any longer.

[00:03:01]may also notice that I've placed masking tape down first. That helps with uh being able to peel off the pattern and not leaving any sticky residue. And from here, we're going to laminate these together. So, I'm going to apply some glue. And we're going to glue these just like this with our quarter inch in the middle as a sandwich. And making sure that the edges are all lined up. Do not change the orientation of this middle piece that you cut. And as well, guys, what you're going to want to do is go easy on the glue around this cutout because this is going to end up to be the wind channel that blows the air out to make the car run. You don't want to block it with squeeze out. Okay, so I'm going to get these glued up. We can clamp them together and put them aside and let them dry. We can move on to something else. Well, while we're waiting for the glue to dry, we'll move on to making the wheels. Now, on the pattern, the wheels show that they're 3/4 of an inch in diameter. I'm actually going to make them about an inch in diameter. So, I have four pieces of 1/4 in thick cherry. Species doesn't matter here. This is scrap I had in the rack.

[00:04:13]On one piece, I have marked the center, but as well, I have also marked in the corner here. Just a little mark. This tells me that this is the corner that goes up against the fence and up against the stock at the drill press because we're going to have to do multiple setups. So, let's head over to the drill press and I'll show you what you need to do. Well, over here at the drill press, I have the fence set up and the stop set up so that my drill bit strikes right in the middle of our mark that we placed at the center. I have a 1/8 inch drill bit installed in the drill press and I have our mark up in the top right corner against the fence and the stop. So, the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to drill a 1/8 diameter hole in each one of our pieces, ensuring that we keep our registration marks all in the top right corner. Now, without changing any of our setup, our fence or our stop, I'm going to remove our 1/8 bit. And I am going to place in a hole saw. This is a 1 and 1/8 hole saw. And I have taken the bit out. And I'm using a quarter inch brass rod as its arbor.

[00:05:39]That way, it's not drilling our center hole. I've reset the speed of my drill press and using the same setup being the fence and the stop, I'm going to drill each one of these uh holes. And this will form our wheels. Well, our wheels are all cut, but they're a little bit rough, so we're going to have to sand them. So, what I have here is some lengths of 1/8 diameter stainless steel rod.

[00:06:13]I've cut them to be 2 and 5/8 of an inch.

[00:06:18]And we're just going to take one of our wheels.

[00:06:22]And we're going to glue it onto our rod using some CA glue.

[00:06:28]Now, I just use a little bit of accelerator here to glue that in place.

[00:06:33]And there we go. That's one. Now, this is actually going to end up to be one of our axles for our racer toy. So, at this point, what we can do is we can now place all of our wheels onto that same axle.

[00:06:49]I'm going to put it in my cordless drill and kind of jam it tight in the chuck so that it holds those. And then I'm just going to gently spin it and sand off all of our wheels until they're all even.

[00:07:03]So, our wheels are all shaped and I have glued a second one to our second two and 5/8 long 1/8 stainless steel rods. So, we're just going to put those aside and we're going to turn our attention back to the body of our eraser. So, the first thing we're going to do is with our sandpaper that's glued to our 3/4 inch thick MDF, I'm going to flatten the bottom and make sure that it's nice and even. So, the next thing we're going to do is right here in our pattern, we're going to gently center punch this.

[00:07:38]And these are going to be our through axle holes. So, over at the drill press, very slowly, we want to drill a through hole one size bigger than 1/8 of an inch. You want these stainless steel pins to go through and spin freely with very little friction on them. And if we place our axles in those holes, they spin very, very freely, which is what we want. We want as little friction as possible. Okay. So, now we're you can do this next step with the band saw, sander, hand saw. You could do it with a coping saw. I'm going to try it over at the uh scroll saw. It's a little bit heavy of a cut. We're going to see how it goes. If I'm finding it too heavy, I'm going to switch to the band saw, but we're going to cut this outer perimeter of our eraser. Well, truth be told, I didn't even bother with the scroll saw with this one. It's, you know what, an inch and 3/4. A maximum cut of thickness on a scroll saw is 2 in. We're getting right up there close to the mark on the maximum, but being a softer wood, it would take an awful lot to for the gullets of the blade to clear the sawdust. Uh, it's a tough cut. So, as you probably saw there in the video, I just went with a quarterinch blade in my band saw. So, what I have here is a piece of 3/4 in diameter dowel. It is 3/4 of an inch long. And I've drilled a quarterinch diameter hole through the middle here. And what we're going to do is I'm going to glue this on top of our car so that this quarterinch diameter hole lines up with that channel that we cut in our center piece of our build. This will allow for um the air from the balloon to blow out through the back coming down through this ha this 3/4 in dowel. Now the plans initially called for a half inch diameter dowel. But guys, checking the neck of the balloon I was using, the only ones I had, um that was not going to work. It was just too small. So, I had to beef it up a bit. So, that is something that you may want to consider and you may want to keep in mind when choosing the size of your dowel. So, I'm going to clean up the squeeze out, especially inside the hole to make sure it's not blocking the passageway for the air. And we're going to let that dry.

[00:10:23]So, while we're waiting for this dowel to dry, we can glue our axles in place.

[00:10:28]I have some number eight washers. And this is going to prevent friction from our cherry wheels onto the body of our racer. So, one washer on the axle, then we'll place it through our uh axle holes that we drilled earlier.

[00:10:47]And then we're going to place another washer, and then we can use some CA glue and glue our wheels in place. And we're going to do that front and back. Don't worry if your axles are a little sloppy here on your body. That is just fine.

[00:11:03]The washers will prevent them from rubbing against the body and it'll let them spin a lot more freely. Well, we've had a bit of a design change here and I've drilled out this hole here to 516.

[00:11:18]And I've drilled a hole in the back at 5/16 in diameter. And I've inserted an offcut of a reusable plastic drinking straw. Uh that will serve as both the exhaust and as a way to inflate our balloon. Now the only balloon I had was a Christmas balloon. So that's what I'm going to have to use here. But your balloon sits over top of your 3/4 inch dowel just like this. And you will blow it up using your straw.

[00:11:58]put it in place on your table and let it go.

[00:12:04]Okay, that's pretty awesome. I've angled the straw down a little bit. We'll just try it again.

[00:12:18]Yes, having the straw angled downwards uh works a lot better. Gives it a lot more speed. So, I'll glue that in place in an on an angle like that so that uh it'll work a little better. And that will be about it. And there you have it.

[00:12:36]A balloon powered race car. Is this fine woodworking?

[00:12:42]No.

[00:12:43]Is it perfect? No.

[00:12:47]Is it the fastest race car on Earth? No.

[00:12:51]Was it fun? Yeah. Yeah. Guys, there is all kinds of tweaking that you could do with this. Um, I had some problems with the balloon. The air was coming out and it was working just fine. However, the balloon would fall backwards and block my exhaust port and then it wouldn't go anymore until the balloon kind of came up out of the way and then it would go again. So, that's why I added the straw exhaust at the back. Um, before that, I was just blowing into the car to blow up the balloon and that worked just fine as well. But once the balloon fell over again, it blocked the exhaust and then uh that was the end of the car's travel.

[00:13:36]However, putting the straw in and increasing those holes also decrease the speed of the vehicle. So, you could play around with it. Change the different sizes of the holes. Change the way that you do things. That 5/16 diameter hole that I drilled down through the 3/4 in dowel and in through the back of the vehicle, the only reason that's 5/16 is because that's the diameter of the reusable straw that I had. It could be anything. I could have left it the way it was if I wanted to because quarter inch worked really well. Uh it just the balloon got in the way. So I am going to adjust the pattern for the adjustments that I made here today. And then it's up to you how you want to do it. If you want to put it back to original or maybe you want to experiment and change it up yourself. The patterns that I make are not written in stone. You can do whatever you want to change it up and make it your own. And I encourage that here on the show.

[00:14:36]This is a fantastic one for one, using up scraps, and number two, getting the young ones out here to build this with you. Mom or dad, uncle, aunt, grandma, grandpa, whoever may have to do the bulk load of the work in order to make the actual car, but let the young one come out and help with the glue up, help with the assembly, help with the drilling of the holes, help with all of it if if you can. depends on the age category you're dealing with, but this is a fantastic project to get the young ones out to the shop, get them off their electronics and away from their video games and out here to do something creative with their hands instead of just staring at a screen constantly, which seems to be the norm these days. Either way, guys, it's a fun project. It's a great one to do with the young ones. Great one to use up scrap. Great way to waste a little bit of time in the afternoon and have some fun. Make a bunch of them, decorate them, have some races, do what you have to, but make one of these.

[00:15:37]Guys, I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you've enjoyed the program. If you haven't already, if you found any part of today's show inspiring, likable, fun, informative, why not like and subscribe to the channel? We have an amazing audience base here and I'm hoping that you're going to consider becoming a part of that. Guys, once again, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed the project. I hope you're going to use up some of your scrap and make one of these for yourself. I hope you're going to bring your young ones out to the shop and get them to build it with you. But more importantly, I hope you're going to join me again next week when I bring you yet another woodworking video.