Carpenter Philip flies the South West College flag in Stuttgart

The European Federation of Timber and Wood Construction (E.V.H) 10th Professional European Competition for Carpenters took place from January 31st to February 3rd in Stuttgart.

This competition, regarded as the largest and most important trade event for the timber industry in Germany, also ran in parallel with the ROOF+TIMBER International Trade Fair 2012.

The German carpentry organization, Holzbau Deutschland – Bund Deutscher Zimmermeister im Zentralverband des Deutschen Baugewerbes, hosted the competition for the third time, after hosting the event in 1994 and 1996.

Nine countries entered the race to determine the best nation of carpenters and the overall best carpenter in Europe.

During the three-day competition, young journey-level carpenters from across Europe built challenging roof truss models and demonstrated professional handling of wooden materials, all of which were evaluated for the individual contest and the contest of nations by a jury of experts.

Countries that took part were France, Denmark, Hungary, Germany, South Tyrol (Italy), Holland, Switzerland, Austria and UK.

The UK was represented by South West College Carpentry student, Philip Glasgow, who was also accompanied by his Carpentry Lecturer, Tony McGartland and UK Carpentry Expert, Pat Phillips.

After three days of competition the judges awarded prizes in three categories: European Team, Professional Carpenter and Young Carpenter. The overall winning nation was Germany.  Philip was awarded second place in the Young Carpenter section and was presented with a hand-crafted trophy made from wood.

To add to this success, Philip and another of Tony’s students, Bryan McGurk have been invited by UK Skills to take part in the Carpentry selection for World Skills (Leipzig 2013) , held over three days from March 19th - 21st at Coleg Sir Gar in South Wales.