FORESTRYJOURNAL.CO.UK MAY 20 18 33complete sense at the time for him and his wife Julie, as
she was eight and a half months pregnant with their first
child and the job came with a house to boot.
Pete and Julie spent nine years in the Highlands, with
Pete continuing to compete in the National Tree Felling
Competition. In 1993, when the competition was held
at Ae Forest in Dumfriesshire, he won both the tree
felling and carving elements of the event. Interestingly,
despite this success, Pete still wasn’t fully committed
to developing his carving, and he continued to pursue
representing Great Britain in tree felling instead.
That same year, he was part of the UK team that
competed in Lucerne, Switzerland. In the following two
championships in Romania and Finland, he became team
leader. He later became President of the
World Logging Championship, and in 2002
he was head of the organisation, helping
to bring the championships to Lockerbie.
The event became part of the APF show
at Lockerbie, with 32 nations represented.
“Myself and the rest of the organisers
for that year got lots of help and advice
from the World Logging Committee,
and in the time before the actual event
they visited the site to inspect it. We
needed to raise £400k of sponsorship to
host the event, and you have to remember
this was the year after 9/11, and the foot
and mouth outbreak that devastated the
agriculture and tourism industry in the
UK.” The event went ahead, even though
at times it was touch and go.
It turned out to be a great success
and Pete is proud of bringing the event
to both Scotland and the UK. Pete had
been doing more carving during this
time, adding to his already impressive
skills, and he started to become involved
in carving events and shows across the
country, many of which he still supports
and carves at.
Pete had also made a change in his
work life as well, leaving the Forestry
Commission to join BSW Timber
Harvesting in 1996. They were
subsequently taken over
by Tilhill, but with Tilhill
becoming part of BSW
Timber, Pete’s career has
gone full circle, and with two children by this point, the
family decided to move back to Moffat. He took up his
current role as harvesting manager, covering Dumfries
& Galloway, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, managing the
purchase of standing parcels of timber, extracting
value from them, managing harvesting contractors, and
ensuring the delivery of the timber for processing at end
users.
One of the first carving events that Pete participated
in was back in 1996 at Westonbirt Arboretum in
Gloucestershire, called Sculptree. “It was a bank holiday
weekend event, with around ten carvers taking part.
Some of the guys I met here were more into chisel carving
than using a chainsaw. It was a great event to be part of;
I learned a lot from them about the use of the chisel in
carving, and I was able to show them the merits of
using a chainsaw to create an end carve of note. In
fact, that was where the nickname ‘Chainsaw Pete’
came from.”
Pete supported this event for a decade, and went
on to take part in the first carving demonstrations
at the APF show at Telford on the Husqvarna
stand in 2000. The following the APF, Mike
Burns and Harry Thomas joined Pete to help
raise the profile of chainsaw carving.
Chainsaw carving events started to gain
more momentum, and in 2002 Tom Jones,
the driving force behind the original
setup of Carve Carrbridge, contacted
Pete to seek his support to start up a
carving event in the Highland village.
The first event in 2003 saw only six
carvers take part in an event which
shared the stage with the World Porridge
Making Championships. It soon outgrew
this to grow into its own event which saw
over 20 carvers take part in 2017,
with over 4,000 people turning
up to watch carvers from
across the globe. This was the
first ‘chainsaw only’ carving
competition in the country
and is still one where
the carvers can only
use a saw and burner to
develop their carves in
a four-hour period,
which makes it quite
a unique competition.Above: The World
Logging Championships
at Lockerbie in 2002
attracted entrants from
across the world.Left: The First Nation
figure carve at RBGE
Dawyck.Bears are always a
popular carve.