Pinewood Derby Trophies From Wood Scraps

I made 19 trophies for an upcoming Pinewood derby out of scraps of wood. I started by dumping out the scrap barrel and looking through what kinds of wood I had available.

• Scrap wood
• Drum Sander
• Table saw
• Miter saw
• Router Table & Router
• Drill Press
• Belt Sander
• Palm Sander
• Laser Engraver
• Driver and 2" screws
• Wipe on Polyurethane
• Nail Gun with 1" nails
• Pin Nailer with 1/4" pin nails

I decided to use some scrap flooring for the base of all of the trophies. So I started by using the table saw to rip some scrap hardwood flooring into 4" wide pieces and after that cut them into 4" squares. After getting them into squares I realized that I should have sanded off the finish, I used a very coarse sand paper in a drum sander to run them through. It took a few passes and I ran them through diagonally and rotating them 90 degrees between passes. It took a few passes to remove all of the finish and left angled grooves. Then I used the router to round over the edges and finished these pieces up with a palm sander. I liked how the angled grooves looked so I didn't fully sand them off.

For the trophy tops I decided to make an angled wedge design and had some pieces of cedar logs that had been discarded into a burn pile when a cabin was built. As luck would have it, all I needed to do with them was to cut them into pieces that were about 1 3/4" wide and I did that with the miter saw. After that it was just some sanding with a belt sander and then finishing with a palm sander.

I squared up some cherry cut offs from some furniture construction to be approx 1 3/4" square and approx 2" tall. After cutting them to size I marked the centers and drilled a hole all the way through so that I could screw them up into the wedge. After drilling them I used a counter sink bit so that the screws would be counter suck and then I set them aside and them got to work cutting some mahogany cutting board cutoffs into 2" squares. Once those were cut, I took all of these pieces to the router and rounded over the corners. After routing was done, it was sanding with a belt sander and palm sander.

The last piece was the stop block/placard that would hold the car in place on top of the trophy. For this I used some thin strips of mahogany that was left over from a cabinet construction. I used them as they were, thickness wide and simply ripped them down to 1 3/4" wide and then using the miter saw cut them 2 1/4" long. Then I sanded them all with the palm sander.

Time to set the pieces together and see how they look. Each trophy gets a wedge and a base. The 2nd place trophies also have a smaller square between the wedge and base. And for the 1st place and judged trophies, they also have an upright piece that is attached to the wedge.

I used a laser engraver to engrave the placards and the sides of the wedges but this could have been done with a wood burner as well. Or you could paint them instead. The makerspace I belong to has a LS1630 Boss Laser so that it what I used.

I applied a little bit of wood glue to each wedge and then screwed them together with 2" screws. For the flat pieces, I just used a nail gun and nailed the bases and smaller square on.

It was then that I realized that I had made the mistake of assembling the main body of the trophies before applying the finish. I would not suggest that, it made it more difficult to get the finish into the corners of where the different pieces met up. I ended up using a small brush to apply the finish into the corners and then applied the rest of the finish with a rag. Luckily I hadn't put the placards on so I was able to apply the finish to them separately. Once the first coat was dry I used a small amount of wood glue and pin nails to attach the placards and then wiped on another coat of finish.

Here are the final results. I'm very happy with how they turned out and I'm sure that the cub scouts will enjoy showing off their cars on these trophies.