Robin Clevett At The Professional Woodworking Expo 2026 (The Installer Show)

First of all, I wanna paint the scene of exactly what I did at Installershow.

So my part of Installershow was called Professional Woodworking Expo, and they reached out to me some time ago and said, "Robin, we want you to come and do whatever you want to do at the Woodworking Expo." And so I said, "I've got an idea.

I wanna pull up in my van, and I wanna turn up, and I wanna work." And the reason why I wanna do that is because I wanna do, like, a YouTube live, stuff that I'm known for on YouTube, and do it in real life.

And then I expanded on that and I thought, "Well, why don't we invite some local apprentice carpenters from colleges nearby to join us across the three days and take part?" And so, because we needed mentors as well, I was lucky enough to invite some mentors, some well-known carpenters and joiners to join me on each day to take care of the, uh, apprentices and look after them and share their knowledge and also talk to the public.

So I'm gonna run down what my idea was.

I thought to myself, I'm known for roofing, traditional cut roofing, so we built a roof structure which involved a nice gable-to-gable roof with a valley, and it returned round a corner into a hip and then off to another gable.

And on the backside of that, we did a full purpose-made staircase.

Now, that involved, obviously, planning out a staircase which is gonna fit into the rig.

We manufactured it with Stairbox, who were kind enough to, uh, donate this to the students to use.

And, um, we built a full staircase.

So what it looked like in the end was, was like a small house on one side, and on the inside it was like a traditional hallway, a full-size staircase.

And we did ad hoc demos as well.

We were using all kinds of materials, from timber to insulation, and of course tools and fixings.

And the interaction we had from so many visitors has been so encouraging, but there's always been a theme which runs through construction, and that is that skills are getting lost.

And unfortunately, that is still continuing, and that's what most people were talking to me about, was lack of training, lack of apprenticeships.

So I really feel, um, honored to be able to come and showcase our skills in this fashion.

I take my hat off to the organizers for having the vision and the foresight.

And, um, before we go on to interview some of the people that worked with me and helped me, I wanna also say thank you to all of the organizations and companies that actually, um, got behind this as well, uh, gifting timber, for example.

My local timber merchant, Champion Timber, gifted the timber for all the apprentices to use, as did Stairbox as well, and the wonderful sustainable Luminn plywood as well were, were, were too quick to say, yes, of course they can use our material.

And the colleges were excellent in getting involved and making sure their students could get down here, um, go through all the health and safety procedures as well, which is a big deal when you're at the NEC.

Anyway, we'll come to more of that in a moment.