How to Make a Medal Display Board For Runners

It’s starting to warm up outside which means another season of your favorite sporting events are coming soon. With the first day of spring many runners come out from their dreadmills and are excited to run in the fresh air again. Many races come with medals, but, what do you do with them all? Be sure to add this to your list of DIY hot glue gun projects. This Medal Board is the perfect place to display your prizes and reminisce on past victories.

What you need:

• 2ft piece of wood ( this project we chose a prefinished shelf from a local hardware store)
• 6 square bend hooks 1 13/16
• 4 cup hooks 3/4’’
• Surebonder H-195 Detail Glue Gun
• Surebonder Metallic Silver Color Stiks
• Tape measure
• Pencil
• Long nose pliers
• Detailed letters or quote (we used a recycled birthday card)

Race bibs come in different sizes. We have found the two most common sizes are around 6.75” and everything else was just under 8”. The easiest thing to do is to have your race bibs on hand so you can double check their size. This is around the measurements that the race bibs we had on hand were but be sure to check the ones you have as the measurements may be a little different. The first thing to do is to decide where to place the cup hooks so we have a place to hang the race bibs.

On 2ft board, we chose to have about a little over a half inch to 2-inch border. From the border, place the first mark with your pencil. Measure the small race bib length of 6.76” from that mark and pencil in another one. Your top cup hooks will be placed where you marked. Move down about 4 to 5 inches’ parallel from your top cup hooks and mark with a pencil. Measure the large bib length of 7 ⅞” inches over and make another mark.  Again, be sure to match up with the race bibs you currently have to be sure the measurements are correct. Your bottom cup hooks will be placed where you marked.

You can use a power drill or depending on the material of your board, you may be able to just screw the cup hooks in. The board we picked up for this project is an Eco-Certified Composite so we were able to screw the hardware in without too much of an issue. We used a pair of long nose pliers to help when necessary.

In this design we planned for our large race bibs and medals to hang off the board on the bottom. 

For our quote on the board, we used an old birthday card that had exactly what we needed. We always recommend trying to recycle things if you can. After pulling the letters off we laid them out where we would like them to be but did not glue them down yet.

Next, take your square bend hooks and roughly space them out about 2.5- 3 inches apart. Screw them into place. In our composite board these did not screw in nicely but we have the perfect solution to cover all of that up. However, we want to secure ourletters in place first.

Use some hot glue and glue the letters into place roughly 1.5-2 inches apart depending on how you space your square bend hooks. We want to space the letters out to spread them across the length of all of the hooks.

Lastly, to cover up any unsightly issues around the square bend hooks, we took a little silver colored hot glue and covered up any flaws up. Not only is it a great tool to cover imperfections, but it will also help secure the hooks.

Attach a hook to hang the board from the back and there you have it! A great DIY display board for all of your medals. Stay tuned to Inspirations by Surebonder as we find new cool things to make.