Robin Clevett Talks To Award Winning Carpenters & Joiners About Their Road To Success

This is Robin Clement, and this evening I'm chatting to award-winning carpenters and joiners about the benefits of winning awards and what they're most proud of in their journey to those awards.

But I wanna take this opportunity to sort of shout out and give credit to some tradespeople and other business owners, uh, some who might have already been award-winning, some in my eyes would be worthy of an award if they were to enter one.

Now, I could probably, if I thought about this, write an indefinite list, especially for some of the people I've worked with when I was younger, okay? Way before social media, way before a- all of those things, and I just thought it was normal b- that these amazing artisans and craftspeople existed.

I, in fact, I worked with so many, maybe I was young and inexperienced that I thought everyone was brilliant.

But looking back, some of these people were absolutely unreal, okay? Mostly working with hand tools as well.

So things have changed.

They've got a lot different technology, moves us on, things get easier.

But coming to the here and the now, um, there's always, whenever someone asks me this question about, oh, who's the best, who's this and who's that, there's too many people to think about and mention.

So I will say this, saying that there's lots of you, but I'm just mentioning a few now.

So off the top of my head, someone who I've got to know since he was about 14 or 15 who's gone on to, um, train in site carpentry at college, and he's gone on to, to, to actually become a joiner, okay? And he's in his early 20s, and he runs a great business.

He doesn't leverage social media because he's more interested in his, um, his actual craft and what he's doing, and he looks after his clients.

He's got an old head on sh- young shoulders, yet very respected by his peers in the trade, and that's Elliot Duff.

And, um, he did actually win a runner-up in, um, Apprentice of the Year, Third Year Apprentice of the Year, of which I was a judge once, so that's how I really got to know about his stuff.

Um, but yeah, I think that we, you know, I'd, I'd definitely hold my hands up and say, "Watch this space," because he, um, he, he's just got a really nice way of doing, of working his craft, and he's cost-effective and he's commercially minded.

So yeah, he, he's someone who I reckon that, um, would quite easily be worthy of awards.

And then let's, um, put a bit of a curveball in, someone that I've been watching from afar, and that's a guy called Will the Roofer, who is a roofing contractor, and he's probably my sort of age and well-known with the amazing company Build With A&E and Tony.

And, um, he's, he's often been on, on their videos on YouTube, and I had the pleasure of talking to him on the Carpentry Show a little while ago, and every now and then I, I, I follow him on his socials.

But what I like about him is the fact that it's a no-nonsense approach.

He's just gets stuck into it.

He's gr- a great tradesperson.

He's sharing his knowledge, and in my, in my eyes, he's, he's worthy of an award, even if it is just for being a really good roofer who says it how it is and does a good job and manages, um, h- how people perceive roofers a lot.

Um, and moving on, um, I met a guy last week, just last week, a guy called Tyrone Paul, a young carpenter and joiner who doesn't live many miles away from me.

He met up with us when we had a little pub, uh, drinks get-together with the Hazard Co. company and, um, he introduced himself and I said, "I know you.

You're the guy..." He had this, um, viral video about a clothes stand he made, which all sort of folded up.

It was incredible the looking thing, and he makes everything virtually by hand.