Reddiseals have been supporting Herefordshire & Ludlow College, who are instrumental in providing training and guidance to newcomers in the industry. Apprenticeships and college courses are the lifeblood of the Joinery trade and as well as working with customers who are already established, Reddiseals want to give a helping hand to trainees just starting out in the trade. Last year we followed a student at the college, Scott, who kept us updated every term on what he was doing.
Blog 1: Starting out in Carpentry & Joinery
Name: Scott
Course: Level 2 Carpentry & Joinery
I’ve always been interested in working with my hands; creating, mending, making and fixing things from a young age, but my start in carpentry wasn’t the most conventional.
Originally I wanted to be an archaeologist -perhaps this was a mix of wanting to be Indiana Jones or maybe Tony Robinson on the Time Team… or maybe both. So, I went to sixth form and took A-Levels in Archaeology as well as Art and Communications & Culture. I passed all three, but was disillusioned as far from my ideal of digging in fields, archaeology seemed to be book based and I was spending more time rummaging in the library, than in the mud.
I started to consider ways of combining my love of the ancient with making things, but I really didn’t know where to start. As it happened, at the time my grandfather had made a wooden rocking horse for the local hospital which was I was amazed by, so I started looking into carpentry as a career with a view to carpentry restoration.
I decided to enrol on the Level 1 Carpentry and Joinery Course at Herefordshire & Ludlow College and then progressed onto Level 2. We’re taught everything from the basics of stud work and flooring to more complicated activities such as roofing and repairing sash windows. The course runs over two and a half days a week for a year in Hereford. Of course, there is theory, but it is limited to 2 to 3 hours per week.
There are twelve of us in the group from all different backgrounds and aged between 17 and 20 something. We work together on some projects such as roofing, whilst for others we work alone. Each of us is doing a different task and these tasks are then rotated so that we’re not all doing the same thing at the same time.
I’m looking forward to the sash window section of the course, which I’ll be talking about in my next blog.
