Yacht Club Trophy

A customer was refered to me (by a local trophy shop) because he needed a base for a chrome sail boat to use as a trophy. His son was supposed to have taken care of this weeks ago. He arrived Monday morning around 9:00 and I told him it would be no problem. Then he indicated he needed it by Friday as the event was taking place Saturday. By 11:00 I was at the lumber dealer getting some nice walnut. By 1:00 I was in the shop (had to eat lunch). After about 5 hours and three pounds of water weight loss (no A/C in my garage/shop and it was close to 100 outside) it was in final glue-up.

The two horizontal pieces required glue up to get them wide enough. The vertical pieces are individual boxes. The corners were mitered with biscuits to reinforce the joints. I routed a shallow recess in the top to keep the boat from moving and had to replace the short threaded stud holding the sail with a piece of all-thread. The trophy shop had the engraving done Tuesday afternoon. After 5 coats of hand rubbed tung oil, I mounted the boat and engraving around 10:00 on Wednesday morning.

Overall the base is about 17” L x 8” D x 10” H. The only disappointing thing is that so much of the wood is covered by the engraving. But the customer was very happy and I even had 2 days to spare.

-- Pat