A buddy I used to work with when I was a Manager in Xbox Live is a member of a fencing club. No, not the picket or chain-link kind, more like the slice-you-to-bits in the blink of an eye kind. He works with the US Fencing Association’s Western Washington Division and they host the Leon Auriol Open every year. Leon is a fencing master who has been teaching fencing here in the Pacific NW for decades. He’s been instrumental in building the fencing community here in Seattle as well as in Portland, Oregon.

These days, the Auriol Open typically draws 200+ fencers from all over the Northwest and as far away as Alaska. It is run by the WWD organization, and takes place at Salle Auriol Seattle (the club Leon founded many years ago). The Auriol Open has been held every year since 1982, so it’s understandable that they are running out of room on their trophies to engrave the names of champions.

Typically when trophies run out of spaces for names you don’t replace them with a new trophy, you mount it to a base and continue to use the original and traditional trophy. One reason you do this is so that new champions can look back through the years to see all the names of the past champions. Take a look at one of the most famous trophies of all time: The Stanley Cup. While they don’t add a wooden base, they keep adding rings at the bottom, and it’s been going that way since 1893.

That’s where I come in.

I am currently working on a design for the US Fencing Association’s Western Washington Division to build the solid walnut bases for the six trophies they award each year at the Auriol Open. To ensure these look just right, I’ve been sending designs back and forth with Dan. Thanks to the Google 3D Warehouse, it was easy to find a similar trophy scale it to the right size, and place it on the base. The follow-me feature in Sketchup made routing the edges a snap.

Here’s the current design, please let me know what you think before I begin the build.