I am always keen to show my support for anybody that wants to get into the plastering industry and I’m very supportive of young people to want to learn the skills required to be tiptop plasterer.
Every year I make the journey up the NEC for the skill show and every year I am blown away by the standard of plastering that these young people are achieving and not only that but the complexity of the designs that the competition’s organisers come up with.
The Plastering competition is split into two competitions one of them is Plastering and Drywall Systems and the other is simply plastering. The Plastering and drywall competition is heavily based on using metal stud work and plasterboarding then finished with Jointing compound the winners and runners up for this competition often go on to compete at World Skills which is in Abu Dhabi next year (2016).
I spent a lot of my day over on the plastering competition as this is the side that interests me the most. Here is a picture of what the plastering competitors had to achieve in the two and half days of the competition.
Sorry for the bad picture of the plans but it should be enough to give you an idea of what the competitors need to achieve. There is a lot of complicated beading to set out and then there are shadow gaps to get right as well. The judging is very strict and as previously mentioned accuracy is needed to be sure to be in a chance with a win.
I want to also point put that these students are still in training and are not full-time plasterers yet. There is a lot of work to get cracked on with and it needs to be done with the attention to detail.
One of the Students Hannah as already ran her fibrous skirting and by the looks of it has done a very nice job of it.
There was a lot of floating to be done for this competition which was good to see but I would like to see them floating without the use of beads as to be honest ruling in between beads is not exactly difficult in anyway shape or form and would really set the competitors apart.
Seeing as its only the first day and, unfortunately, I am not able to spare any more days up here I will have to leave this here and I will get some more photos in the week from the organisers to show you what the competitors have achieved. I have also shot some videos from the day as well which I will be editing and uploading.
Right, so lets waddle over to the Plastering and Drywall Systems competition and take a look over there and see what is going on.
This is what the competitors have to build in the two and half days…
The Plastering and drywall systems competition is all about accuracy and making sure that everything is plumb level and square and quite literally millimeter perfect. as you can see from the drawings it is quite complicated but the competitors are cracking on and getting the job done.
considering this is near the end of the first day I am quite pleased with how quickly everybody is working and how well the projects are coming along. I am a little gutted that I am not here for the end of the competition, but that cannot be helped.
Stay tuned for the videos and some more videos and updates from the Skillshow.