My name is Kevin Runo, and I created this trophy shelf. This was a long hard process of cutting, painting, carving, and everything else in between. This shelf took me over 3 months to make and shows nothing but effort and hard work. Now all that I need to do is fill it up with big money fishing trophies!

Step 1: Gather Materials & Draw Plans/CNC Files

The first step in this project was to draw my plans. By no means were these anything fancy, but they gave me a good idea of what I had to do. This shelf was planned to be 5 feet by 10 inches tall by 10 inches deep. This extraordinary shelf was to be made of poplar and was planned on being 1/2 inch thick. Last but not least, the most important aspect of this design is the CNC plans. I planned on carving over 35 logos of all different major fishing brands. Also on the sides, I wanted to carve the 2 top competitive fishing leagues (Fishing League Worldwide and bassmaster). Lastly, I planned on cutting a 1/4 inch divot all along the top of the shelf so i could inlay black felt for my trophies to sit on. I decided to go with poplar wood for this project because it is relatively soft and i figured it would be easy for the shopbot to cut.

Step 2: Cut Files

This was one of the most interesting parts of my project. This is because when I first did my CNC work on my five foot board, it would not cut all of my logos at the same depth. After running the machine and trying to do it 3 times, we came to the conclusion that it was to much for the machine to handle. To fix this problem, I had to cut the five foot board into one foot sections and then eventually glue it all together. Even though this wasn't what I wanted, it came together the way I wanted in the end. I also had to carve out both sides of my shelf. They were the logos of the two biggest professional fishing circuits in the world (Fishing League Worldwide, and Bassmaster). Lastly, I used the CNC machine to cut out a 1/4 inch divot along most of the top of my shelf. This was a spot to inlay felt for my trophies to sit on.

Step 3: Paint

This was perhaps the most tedious part of my project. This was mainly because of how much detail I had to pay attention to and also how long it took. This process of painting all of my logos took at least two months to complete. For the paint, I used regular arts and crafts paint, and needed to use the smallest brush there was. This is because some of the things I had to paint were extremely small, and were going to be painted in super fine detail. Another thing is that i painted all of these logos in their company colors. I did not change them and made it as legit as I could. Its very hard for people to realize how much time and effort this task took, but in the end, it turned out just the way I wanted it to.

Step 4: Glue, Clear Coat, and Apply Felt

This was the ending of a very long process. These were the final steps in making this the way I wanted it. To glue it together, I used wood glue and applied pressure with clamps Next, sanded the exas glue and started clear coating. To do this, I used spray clear coat so that the carved out loos would not end up filling with clear coat. This process took about a week because I had to cover all angles at least three times. I make it so it was smooth and plastic feeling on all faces. Lastly I applied the felt on top with spray adhesive.I used spray adhesive because it was less messy and wouldn't get over any of the other parts. After doing this, the three and a half month project was finally done. I was very happy with it and t will forever be used to hoist my biggest fishing wins above my head.