Welcome to Part 3 of 'Building a 72 gallon Bowfront Aquarium Stand.' In this wood working EduCast, I built the canopy for the tank.
You should have the base and canopy support already built and trimmed from Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, which would look like this.
1) I started by cutting a 48” piece from a 2” x 4” to act as a back support for the canopy structure. With the tank on the stand, I put the back support against the canopy support. I was then able to make 3 additional pieces (2 x sides, 1 x middle support). Note that I traced the shape of the tank onto the bottom of the side supports in order to cut those pieces with the correct tank-shaped angle.
2) For this step, I added 2 support pieces to complete the rectangular shape of the canopy structure.
For the sake of testing the functionality of how I was planning on attaching the canopy to the canopy support, I temporarily screwed the canopy to the support.
TIP - If you have to use many screws in a row going with the grain, pilot the holes to avoid splitting the wood.
3) Now that I have the raw structure of the canopy created, and I’ve tested the mounting hardware, I added vertical support pieces to fill in the height requirement of the canopy. I want the vertical pieces to sit on the top of the tank. I added shorter pieces to each corner, one to the center support, and 2 longer pieces between the edges and center to act as support later for the skinning of the canopy.
4) With the structure complete, I began skinning and trimming the canopy to match the rest of the tank stand. Here I added the side panels.
5) Next, I continued onto the front panel. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have panel pieces that were longer than 48” so my front panel wasn’t long enough to span the length of the bowfront. Fortunately, with the trimming job, I was able to hide this problem.
(A special thanks to MallyG for lending me his compound miter saw…….cuts like butter)
TIP - When clamping, it's helpful to use longer pieces of scrap wood in between the clamp and finish wood. This helps to even out the clamping pressure and avoids marking or damaging the finish wood
6) Once again, I planed out my wider trim pieces to match the stand portion. With this piece I’m going the overlap the tank in order to hide the upper black plastic piece of the tank.
7) In the shot, I flipped the canopy over to add the bottom trim. Since it hangs lower than the structure of the canopy, flipping the canopy made it much easier to install that piece of trim. I used a combination of glue, screws, and clamps to mould the trim into place.
8) Next I added the side trim to match the front trim. Here you can see how the trim hides the upper black plastic of the aquarium.
9) Next I added the top trim to the canopy. This piece is thinner than the last piece, but matches the rest of the stand trim.
10) This is watch you should have once the top and bottom portions of the canopy trim is added.
11) Once the horizontal trim pieces were installed, I added the vertical pieces. This is what the side looked like.
Once all the trim is installed and the wood and glue have dried, cut off all the excess pieces that overhang (as seen on left side here). 
Next week I’ll continue the project with Part 4 – Staining and Finish.
Happy wood working!!
Brian
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how much was the total cost to build it?
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