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SkillsUSA Tests Students’ Cabinetmaking Abilities in a Race Against Time

Photos by Kristine Cox, Rowland Woodworking

Fifty-five competitors representing high schools and colleges from around the country had merely eight hours to create a highly customized standing cabinet. At the end of the day, only six of them departed Atlanta with a medal in the 2023 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking competition.

The Cabinetmaking contest was one of 110 separate events held during the annual SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Conference, June 18-24 at the Georgia World Congress Center. In addition to Cabinetmaking, more than 6,500 students competed for gold, silver, and bronze medals in a far-flung variety of events including Carpentry, CNC Programming, Baking, and T-shirt design.

Each of the students earned a berth in the national championships by taking first place in their respective state competitions.

Winners of this year’s SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking competition included:

Postsecondary/College
Gold: Ethan Dalton, Anthis Career Center, Fort Wayne, IN
Silver: Ethan Jacobson, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT
Bronze: Luke Laing, Alexandria Technical & Community College, Alexandria, MN

Secondary/High School
Gold: Matthew Holden, Mt. Pleasant High School, Mt. Pleasant, TN
Silver: Clay Beal, West Henderson High School, Hendersonville, NC (WCA EDUcation member)
Bronze: Jerald Wetzel, Bonduel High School, Bonduel, WI

Clay Beal of West Henderson High School won a silver medal this year. He won a bronze medal in SkillsUSA 2022.

Project Overview
The contestants were tasked with building a free-standing cabinet with the materials and drawings supplied. Features of the cabinet included an 11-piece door, a top with a trapezoid plywood core with hardwood edges, a drawer, a base shelf, and tapered legs.

To create the cabinets, the students were required to read the drawings, lay out, and cut out the parts using a table saw, band saw, hand drill, hinge boring machine, and various other hand tools. Adding to the challenge, they had the pressure of working in tight quarters surrounded by their competitors while the clock was ticking down to complete their projects. They were judged on how well their assembled cabinet met the specified tolerances and aesthetics of the design.

Kent Gilchrist, technical chair of SkillsUSA and a member of the Woodwork Career Alliance Board of Directors, developed the prototype of this year’s project.

“When I came up with the concept, I started with an art nouveau style,” Gilchrist said. “I scaled it back somewhat, but still wanted to do something with curves to make the project more interesting and challenging. For example, each of the curved muntin bars on the door has a hand-cut tenon at the end to insert into the grooves of the adjoining bar.”

“So much of what we are doing in industry today is automated,” Gilchrist added. ”What’s not automated are the measuring and layout components of the project. You still have to be able to do that.”

Three Major Project Challenges
Of the 55 students who competed – 41 high school, 14 postsecondary – only five or six of them completed the project within the allotted time and none without errors. The fact that mistakes will be made is a given as this is probably the most demanding project any of the competitors has tackled, Gilchrist said. The keys to winning a medal included minimizing mistakes by thinking through the creation of the individual components and managing time effectively.

Gilchrist pointed to three of the most challenging aspects the competitors faced to replicate the prototype cabinet.

THE DOOR: The 11-piece door consisted of two sold wood stiles, two solid wood rails, three solid wood curved muntin bars – all ¾ inch — and four pieces of 1/4-inch veneered panel. “To save them time, the muntin bars had grooves cut on each side to receive the veneered panels that they cut to size and shape using a template on a bandsaw,” Gilchrist said.

“There actually were two sets of these veneer panels with the inlaid muntin bars, one for the door and one for the back of the cabinet. I wanted them to do that because we do so much panel work in the industry. It emphasized the need to accurately measure and lay out the components.”

“A lot of them did struggle with the hand-cut tenons because they were never asked to do that,” Gilchrist noted. “While contestants are always asked to bring a hand saw and chisels, most of them never really seem to use them much and it showed.”

THE TOP: The core material of the cabinet’s top had a trapezoid shape. The contestants had to create the trapezoid core and then cut solid wood edges to apply at each end to create a rectangular top.

“We had a fixture for them to cut the trapezoid core,” Gilchrist continued. “While it was designed to be cut with the face down, many cut it with the face up. As a result, there were a lot of backward tops with the trapezoid going the wrong way.”

THE SHELVING: “The half-lap joinery on the shelving puzzled some of them,” Gilchrist said. “We noted on the drawings that it was a half lap and that both sides were to be dadoed. The leg was 7/8-inch thick and the shelf was ¾-inch thick. The dado was set up for the ¾-inch thickness of the plywood but they had to remember to measure to the right point of the leg and then make a second pass in order to get the right thickness on where the shelf would saddle over the leg. Some wanted to go the easy route and just dado one side. Some couldn’t understand why they had to dado both sides. But that’s how you get a better joint.”

Upping the Ante
Gilchrist heads a committee made up of woodworking professionals and instructors from around the country. Most of them have ties to the Architectural Woodwork Institute and all are involved with their respective state’s SkillsUSA competitions leading up to the national championships.

Members of the 2023 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking Technical Committee included:
Kent Gilchrist
, Fremont Interiors, SkillsUSA technical chair/AWI SkillsUSA Committee member
Kristine Cox, Rowland Woodworking, AWI SkillsUSA Committee chair
Joe Davis, Dale Jackson Career Center, SkillsUSA Education Committee chair
Tony Aubin, Aubin Woodworking, AWI SkillsUSA Committee member
Ryan Flanagan, Riverside Architectural Millwork, AWI SkillsUSA Committee member
John Volpe, Volpe Millwork, AWI SkillsUSA Committee member

“One of the committee’s goals has been to make the national competition more difficult to match the expectations that we have in the industry.” Gilchrist said. “As we have built up the level of challenges for the national SkillsUSA proejct, we have seen that the advisors at the state level have upped their game dramatically.

“For instance. when I took over the Indiana contest, it was a written test for cabinetmaking. They didn’t build anything. The students took a written test and the winner went to nationals. They were at a loss. Indiana typically placed middle to the lower end of the group at nationals. Since we added a skills competition in Indiana, we had one student place second last year in high school and this year an Indiana student won gold in postsecondary. It was the first time we ever had a postsecondary competitor from Indiana,” Gilchrist said.

In addition to ratcheting up the SkillsUSA project to make it more challenging, the committee also expanded the orientation day before the competition to include more presentations about the woodworking industry including an overview of career opportunities and new technologies. Woodworking instructors who attended SkillsUSA met separately to learn about the WCA skill standards and credentialing system, AWI scholarship opportunities for their students, and to engage in an open forum with their peers.

Industry Support
The following companies provided services, equipment, and products for the SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking contest.
A1 Face Veneer
American Packaging
Bell Cabinetry & Design
Blum
Boyce Highlands
DeWalt Power Tools
Flexible Materials
Grizzly Industrial
Hafele
Irwin Industrial Tools
Lamello/Colonial Saw
Richelieu
Rockler Woodworking
Rugby Architectural Building Products
Sawstop
SCM North America
Shaper Tools
Widgetco
Woodwork Career Alliance of North America

Note: WCA INDustry Sponsors are bold faced.

 

 

 

Young Cabinetmakers Strut Their Stuff at SkillsUSA

 

The reverberating buzz of saws cutting wood in the cavernous Georgia World Congress Center was music to Kent Gilchrist’s ears, technical chair of the annual SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking competition.

After having been cancelled in 2020 and held virtually last year, the national SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking competition returned as a live event in June. Some 45 high school students and 10 postsecondary students from across the country travelled to Atlanta to put their woodworking skills to the test. Each of them qualified to participate in the national competition by virtue of being crowned champion of his or her respective state’s contest.

In the end, three high school students and three postsecondary students stood triumphantly on the podium to receive their medals. The 2022 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking winners included:

Secondary/High School
Gold: Hayden Clarke, College Station High School, College Station, TX
Silver: Joseph Heuberger, Area Career Center, Hammond, IN
Bronze: Clay Beal, West Henderson High School, Hendersonville, NC (WCA EDUcation member school)

Postsecondary/College
Gold: Brigg Edwards, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT
Silver: Duncan McLeslie, Hennepin Tech College, Brooklyn Park, MN
Bronze: Alyssa Bealow, Madison Area Technical College, Madison, WI (WCA EDUcation member school)

SkillsUSA 2022 medclaists: Hayden Clarke, left, Joseph Hauberger, Clay Beal, Brigg Edwards, Duncan MacLeslie, and Alyssa Buelow.

“All-in-all it was a very positive experience,” Gilchrist said. “I think the students were excited to be back together again. Some of them competed in the virtual contest last year and now they are back together and competing live. You could tell that they really enjoyed being back together and being on a live stage with people watching them.”

The SkillsUSA Project
Gilchrist, a member of the WCA Board of Directors, has been involved with SkillsUSA for approximately 20 years as a member of the Architectural Woodwork Institute’s (AWI) SkillsUSA Committee. During the past 10 years he has pulled double duty by also serving directly with SkillsUSA as technical chairman of the cabinetmaking competition.

“The AWI SkillsUSA Committee is made up of industry professional who design the project for the contest and determine what tools, machinery, and techniques will be used to build it,” Gilchrist said. “We strive to design the project to match what industry is looking for in employees. We take into consideration what industry wants from an employee — the skills they need, and the machines and tools they use. We also look at the WCA Skill Standards as a guideline for the abilities that the students need and the expectations that we have for judging their performance at SkillsUSA.”

Gilchrist described this year’s project as an end table that included a cabinet with a skeleton frame. “It had contrasting solid wood and a top, with contrasting core material with a contrasting solid edge around it. There were lots of dadoes and half-lap joinery in solid wood.

“It was a challenging project from a number of perspectives because of all of the joinery involved and understanding the sequence of events that had to take place, how to read the drawings, and so forth,” Gilchrist continued. “I spoke to some of the advisors who were brand new to SkillsUSA and they were excited about being there and really appreciated how much more interesting this contest is than others they have been involved with. They start to understand more about what they should be teaching. One of our goals is to show schools what industry is looking for.”

Students had 8.5 hours to complete their project. Whereas some rose to the challenge, others buckled under the pressure of performing before a live audience with the added stress of a time limit.

Industry Suppliers Step Up to the Plate
The challenges were not limited to the student contestants. The cabinetmaking competition organizers faced obstacles as well.

“It was obviously a challenge having not being able to be in person together for the last two years,” Gilchrist said. “We experienced some unexpected challenges, some logistical and some related to finding replacements for some of the suppliers who decided not to return this year. But with every change comes opportunity and our team came through. We made new connections and brought in some new sponsors to our contest. Grizzly Industrial is now part of the contest and is very much interested in participating more in the future. SCM participated by providing the edgebander and taking part in the student orientation.

“One of the biggest changes was with the joinery the students used. Colonial Saw provided us with six Lamello Zeta P2 biscuit joiners. Another new sponsor, Rockler Woodworking, provided dust collection for the machines.”

2022 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking Competition Contributors
American Packaging
Blum
Boyce Highlands
Darlington Veneer
DeWalt Power Tools
Flexible Materials
Grizzly Industrial
Hafele
Irwin Industrial Tools
Lamello/Colonial Saw
Richelieu
Rockler Woodworking
Rugby Architectural Building Products
Sawstop
SCM North America
Woodwork Careeer Alliance of North America

2022 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking Competition Committee
Kent Gilchrist, Fremont Interiors, SkillsUSA technical chair/AWI SkillsUSA committee member
Kristine Cox, Rowland Woodworking, AWI SkillsUSA committee chair
Tony Aubin, Aubin Woodworking, AWI SkillsUSA committee member
Ted Robinson, Technique Manufacturing, AWI SkillsUSA committee member
John Volpe, Volpe Millwork, AWI SkillsUSA Committee member

More About SkillsUSA
SkillsUSA’s National Leadership and Skills Conference is the annual showcase for the best career and technical education students in the nation. This multi-faceted convention features the SkillsUSA Championships. where state champions from across the nation compete head-to-head for bronze, silver and gold medals in over 100 different trade, technical and leadership competitions.

Cabinetmaking was one of 16 manufacturing competitions at SkillsUSA held June 22-23, 2022, in Atlanta. There were 107 student SkillsUSA contests, each held with the help of industry, trade associations and labor. More than 6,500 students competed. They were supported by nearly 2,000 judges and contest organizers.

The competition and meeting space occupied 1.79 million square feet of the Georgia World Congress Center, equivalent to 31 football fields or 41 acres.

SkillsUSA will return to Atlanta June 19-23, 2023. Learn more at SkillsUSA.org.

Female Students Sweep Gold Medals in SkillsUSA California Woodworking Contests

ANAHEIM, CA — SkillsUSA California hosted the State Cabinetmaking and Introductory Woodworking championships on Saturday, April 23 at Chaffey High School in Ontario, CA. Staff and industry volunteers from the Association of Woodworking & Furnishings Suppliers (AWFS) and the Society of Wood Manufacturing (SWM) served as contest coordinators, judges, and with overall contest support.

Over $10,000 in contest supplies, tools, and giveaways for students were donated by Blum Inc, Colonial Saw/Lamello, Decore-ative Specialties, Drawer Box Specialties, Edgebanding Services Inc (ESI), Grex Tools, Häfele America Co., Kemp Hardware, Royal Plywood, and Society of Wood Manufacturing (SWM), a chapter of AWFS. For the first time in recent history, female students won the Gold Medal for both the Introductory Woodworking and Cabinetmaking contests, and a school from central California took home five of the six medals.

Introductory Woodworking Contest Supports First-Year Students
Twenty-one students from nine schools throughout California competed in the Introductory Woodworking contest. This contest is intended to introduce students to the SkillsUSA competitive environment and encourage them to return to compete in the Cabinetmaking contest the following year. Contestants are given a set of plans to construct a folding shelf. They had access to chop saws, drill presses, a band saw, jig saws, power drills, and hand tools to create the component parts and assemble the shelf in a six-hour time span.

Cabinetmaking Contest Prepares Students for Industry
The 2022 SkillsUSA California State Cabinetmaking competition hosted 22 students from 11 different high schools across the state. Students competed for medals and the opportunity to represent California at the upcoming SkillsUSA National Championships, which will take place in Atlanta June.

The students built a functioning cabinet that tested their skills using various woodworking machines. Students had access to the table saw, router table, edgebander, sliding panel saw, miter saw, and hand tools. Karl Frey from Colonial Saw introduced the students to the Zeta joinery system with a contest loan of a Zeta machine and a donation of Tenso connectors for all of the Cabinetmaking students. Local Blum representative Lee Schuette assisted the students in attaching their hinges using a Blum Minipress P and helped contestants install Blum Tandem drawer slides. Decore-ative Specialties donated the beautiful solid oak doors and drawer fronts for the contest, saving the students’ time and enhancing the project.

Cabinetmaking contestants had about three hours to review the plans and just six and a half hours to finish the project. Contest judges used criteria such as accuracy of measurements, safety, and use of tools and machinery to determine the scores. Not all students completed the project, but all contestants took home their cabinets after the event so that they could complete them if necessary.

Contests Made Possible Through Volunteers and Industry Donations
Materials for both contests were generously donated by Royal Plywood of Cerritos, CA. In addition to the Tandem slides and drawer hinges, Blum provided the students with tape measures and pencils. Drawer Box Specialties (DBS) provided pre-made dovetail drawer boxes that the students assembled during the contest. Häfele America donated the Hinges for the Introductory Woodworking contest and locking casters for the Cabinetmaking contest.  ESI donated the edge-banding and the knobs for the drawer and door were provided by Kemp Hardware. Prize packages for the top medalists were provided by members of the Society of Wood Manufacturing.

AWFS® and SWM are grateful to the team of volunteers who contributed their time to plan, organize, and execute the contests:

— Saúl Martín, Architectural Woodworking Company – Cabinetmaking Contest Coordinator
— Imelda Torres – Cabinetmaking Contest Support and Photography
— Karl Frey, Colonial Saw – Cabinetmaking Judge
— Diana Ramirez, Reborn Cabinets – Cabinetmaking Judge
— Kenneth Thomas, Inland Woodworkers – Cabinetmaking Judge
— Jorge Garcia, Ontario High School – Cabinetmaking Support
— Oton Gonzalez, Escondido High School – Cabinetmaking Support
— Charlie Rizzo, Ethan Allen – Cabinetmaking Support
— Lee Schuette, Blum Inc. – Cabinetmaking Support
— Mike Trejo, Inland Woodworkers – Cabinetmaking Support
— George (Randy) Zubieta, Oceanside High School – Cabinetmaking Support

— Adam Kessler, AWFS/SWM – Introductory Woodworking Contest Coordinator
— Devyn Bervid, Tecture San Diego – Introductory Woodworking Judge
— Nathaniel Hall, Made Lumber San Diego – Introductory Woodworking Judge

The project plans were developed by SWM and drafted by AWFS Education Manager Adam Kessler, along with support from Saúl Martín of Architectural Woodworking Company.

Congratulations to the SkillsUSA California State Student Medalists!
Kyleen Mitchell of Monache High School (Porterville) received the highest score and the Gold medal in the state high school Cabinetmaking competition and has been invited to represent California at the SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Championships (NLSC) in Atlanta, Georgia, June 20-24, 2022, where she will compete against other top scoring high school competitors from other states. The Society of Wood Manufacturing raised the funds to cover Kyleen’s NLSC registration costs. Rounding out the Cabinetmaking medalist are two more students from Monache High School: Daniel Lopez earned Silver and Sebastian Corona earned Bronze. In the Introductory Woodworking contest, Maria Gamez of Monache High School won Gold, Jiarui Liu of San Gabriel High School (Alhambra) received Silver, and Marriner Christenson, also of Monache High School received Bronze.

SkillsUSA California Virtual Regional Contests Held Earlier This Year
In January and February, SWM volunteer members supported the SkillsUSA California Regional woodworking contests. Over fifty high school students competed in the regional Cabinetmaking and the Introductory Woodworking contests combined. The regional contests serve as a qualifier to determine which contestants will advance to the State Conference. Students had to build a project in their school shop and submit a video about the process. After the judges reviewed the contestants’ videos, the judges also interviewed each contestant via Zoom.

If you would like to learn more about SkillsUSA woodworking or participate in future SkillsUSA California woodworking events, please contact Adam Kessler at adam@awfs.org or (323) 215-0312 for more information.

To see information on the SkillsUSA California Woodworking competitions from AWFS  including photos, sponsor and volunteer information, contest plans, and results, click here.

About SkillsUSA: SkillsUSA is one of the largest national career & technical student organizations in the nation. It promotes job readiness with skills and leadership training and supports students entering skilled trades. Learn more at skillsusa.org

About SWM: The Society of Wood manufacturing (SWM) is a Southern California chapter of AWFS that supports local schools and students through SkillsUSA contests, donations, networking events, and much more. Learn more at awfs.org/education/swm

About AWFS
The Association of Woodworking & Furnishings Suppliers (AWFS), founded in 1911, is a non-profit organization that wholly owns and produces the biennial AWFS®Fair. The largest trade association serving the entire home and commercial furnishings industry, AWFS has more than 400 members, including manufacturers and distributors of machinery, hardware, software, tooling, lumber, components, plastics, wood products and supplies for the woodworking industry including cabinet, furniture, millwork and custom woodworking products. To learn more, visit awfs.org.

Scenes from 2018 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking Competition

Medalists for the 2018 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking competition hailed from high schools and colleges located in six states.

The winners were announced June 29 at the Awards Ceremony of SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Louisville, KY. More than 6,500 career and technical education students joined in the excitement of hands-on competition in 102 different trade, technical, and leadership fields.

SkillsUSA 2018 Cabinetmaking medalists. Front Row, HIgh School: Tyler McLaughlin, Silver; Bradlee Benjamin, Gold; and Ravindra Dave, Bronze. Back Row, College: Andrew Dearing, Silver; Alex Hamacher. Gold; and Johnathan Schnyder, Bronze.

Bradlee Benjamin of Berks CTC – East Campus of Oley, PA, took home the Gold Medal for high school students. He was joined on the podium by Tyler McLaughlin of Yutan Public Schools in Yutan, NE; and Ravindra Dave of Cary High School of Cary, NC, Silver and Bronze medalists respectively.

Alex Hamacher of Washburn Tech of Topeka, KS, won the Gold Medal for colleges. Andrew Dearing of Utah Valley University of Orem, UT won Silver; and Johnathan Schnyder of Jefferson Community & Technical College of Louisville, KY, won Bronze.

Students competing in Cabinetmaking demonstrated competencies related to the building maintenance trade. Contestants built a small cabinet from the materials and drawings supplied. They were expected to read the drawings, lay out and cut the parts using a table saw, laminate trimmer, hand drill, hinge boring machine and various hand tools. The parts had to t be accurately assembled, sanded and adjusted to tolerances specified by the judges.

Kent Gilchrist, a chief assess skill evaluator for the Woodwork Career Alliance, served as technical committee chair of the Cabinetmaking contest. Other members of the technical committee included AWI SkillsUSA Committee Chair Kristine Cox, Rowland Woodworking, Jerry Allen, Allen Millwork Co., KS; Jerry Brewer, Ohio Valley Door Corp., IN;  NC; Greg Heuer, Architectural Woodwork Institute, VA; Ted Robinson, Technique Manufacturing Inc., KS; John Volpe, Volpe Millwork Inc., OH; Charlie Zizumbo, Salina Planing Mill Inc., KS.

About SkillsUSA
SkillsUSA is a vital solution to help close the skills gap. This nonprofit partnership of students, instructors and industry ensures America has the skilled workforce it needs to stay competitive. Founded in 1965 and endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education, the association serves more than 360,000-member students and instructors each year in middle schools, high schools and colleges. This diverse talent pipeline covers 130 trade, technical and skilled service occupations, the majority STEM-related. More than 600 corporations, trade associations, businesses and labor unions support SkillsUSA at the national level. SkillsUSA programs are integrated into career and technical education through a framework of personal, workplace and technical skills grounded in academics. Local, state and national championships, designed and judged by industry, set relevant standards for career and technical education and provide needed recognition to its students. SkillsUSA also offers technical skill assessments and other workplace credentials. For more information, go to SkillsUSA.org.

Click here to view a video about the SkillsUSA Championships.

Thanks to Kristine Cox for taking and posting all of the photos used in the slide show, except the podium ceremony. Click here to view all photos and videos from the 2018 SkillsUSA Cabinetmaking.

Related reading: Idaho Cabinetmaking Student Russia Bound for WorldSkills