With the baseball season culminating in the Royals winning the World Series, you'll need somewhere to hang your uniform until next year. This upcycled trophy hanger is made from solid metal trophies and a real baseball bat, perfect for you baseball nuts out there.

Whether you're a little league slugger or a major league fanatic, this is an easy woodworking project that's sure to score a homerun!

Ready to hit one out of the park? Let's make!

Step 1: Find Trophies + Materials

I was at an creative reuse center and materials depot (SCRAP in San Francisco), which is a large warehouse that has all kinds of weird donated things for artists to use. Among the piles of nonsense I found a large box of old trophies, most of the for little-league baseball achievements.

These trophies are mass produced and typically assembled with a single threaded rod and nut. Though some were plastic, there were plenty that were solid metal. The trophies were easily disassembled and the bases were discarded, leaving the trophies with a 1/4"-20 threaded rod protruding from the bottom.

I also got an inexpensive 30" baseball bat to use for this project.

Step 2: Measure and Space Trophies

I measured the baseball bat and spaced out the trophies about 4" apart. I made a at each interval, making sure to keep all the marks along a straight line along the long axis of the bat.

Step 3: Size and Drill

Using a standard 1/4" nut I sized a drill bit that was slightly smaller than the diameter of the nut, this will allow the nuts to be seated snugly into the bat and not rely on glue to hold them in place (though, we'll use that too).

A shallow hole was drilled into the bat at each marked interval, ensuring only to go deep enough to seat the trophies into the bat without going all the way through. TO make this easy I used a piece of tape on the drill as a depth gauge - though since the bat is taped some judgement needs to be used as you drill into the thinner parts of the bat.

Step 4: Sanding a Flat Edge

The bat will need a flat section to attach to the mounting board. I scribed a line on the opposite side from the drilled holes, using a flat bench as a reference guide, then secured the bat in a bench vise and then used a belt sander to smooth the sections of bat flat.

Step 5: Mounting Board

To mount the bat on the wall I decided to mount it first to a nice mounting board.

I found a scrap piece of cherry that I trimmed to size slightly larger than the length of the baseball bat, then routed a nice profile along the edges.

I finished the mounting board with a coat of Tung Oil to bring out the grain of the cherry.

Step 6: Drill Mounting Board

I marked on the mounting board the connection points where the bat would be attached. I then drilled and countersunk holes on the back side of the mounting board.

Step 7: Attach Bat

Using long screws through the back side of the mounting board the flat side of the bat was screwed to the mounting board, affixing the two together.

Step 8: Install Threaded Nuts

The threaded nuts need to be seated into the bottom of each drilled opening. I put a nut onto the bottom of a space threaded bolt I had lying around, then used a dead blow mallet to tap the nuts into the drilled openings. When the nut was fully seated the bolt was unthreaded from the nut and removed, this process was continued for each nut until they were all installed.

Step 9: Screw in Trophies

With the nuts firmly installed into the openings the trophies can be screwed into the nuts and rotated to fit snugly.

Step 10: Wall Clips

I used a type of Z-clip to attach the mounting board to the wall. I installed two Z-clips on the backside of the mounting board, using screws that were shallow as not to penetrate and come out the other side and be visible.

Step 11: Attach to Wall

I attached the corresponding mounting clips to the wall, and ensured the board was level.

With any significant weight you'll want to make sure that at least one of your wall clips is screwed into a wall stud, if not at least use wall anchors to ensure a strong connection.