Back in the spring, I made a unique travel bug as a birthday present for my oldest son Stephen. A travel bug is a trackable item that people who geocache pass among themselves and log in and out of geocaches. The Geocaching website records the travels of all registered travel bugs.
I started with a block of maple I had left over from another project. This was going to be a two sided project.
On one side I used my CNC machine to carve the Geocaching logo and Steve’s geocaching name or “handle”. I hand painted the 4 cells of the geocaching logo, then filled everything with clear epoxy. It took a bit of sanding to get the surface smooth but I got it by working my way down to 1600 grit.
Normally, you buy a travel bug tag and attach it to an item. However, in this case I decided to carve the travel bug number into the block of maple. I had an unused travel bug tag so I carved the travel bug image and that number on one side of the block of wood. The cut out area was filled with black epoxy and sanded smooth.
Another block of wood with a groove cut in it made the perfect stand. Everything was finished with a few layers of polyurethane.
Steve has taken his travel bug to numerous geocaching events though out Ontario and it has been logged many times.