Tús is a Community Work Placement initiative providing 340 quality work placement opportunities annually across the county of Wexford. As part of the experience, participants are given the opportunity to take part in additional training and up-skilling through courses and special projects. The Woodworking Course carried out in conjunction with Tommy Kelly, Bevel Furniture is one such project and has been run successfully for four consecutive years. The 2017 woodwork project commenced on Tuesday, 7th February 2017 and continued for 12 weeks. The aim of the project was to comprise approximately 10-12 separate carvings for Tintern Trails. All the participants carved a wood spirit in a small log approximately 6- 8 inches in diameter which entailed carving a number of different animals which are resident in the Tintern area, for example squirrels, rabbits, owls and badgers.
The carvings for the Tintern trails were crafted from 50 year old Douglas fir logs which were kindly donated by Coillte Ireland. The majority of the work was completed using woodcarving chisels and a mallet and the designs were selected by the participants themselves. An extraordinary achievement considering none of these people had ever carved before and what they produced is a testament to the amount of work and commitment they put in. From this experience, the participants got a great sense of achievement and attained a skill in wood carving. During the duration of the course, RTE Nationwide’s team were filming a documentary on Bevel Woodworking School so all participants were filmed carving on the day and were shown on the programme when it is broadcasted on Friday the 26/05/17.
