The woodshop team earned a total of 50 medals at the  Top of Texas Career & Technical Education (TTCTE) contest.

Of those who competed, junior Chance Turner and senior Thomas Heymer were awarded a combined total of 23 medals for projects that include a bottle jack drawing, a mousetrap car, a bullet shelf, and a bullet dresser. Their top awards include Turner receiving first in the overall category for his bottle jack drawing and Heymer receiving second in overall woodworking for his bullet dresser.

“We all come up with what we want to do on our own and were willing to put in the extra time to complete our projects,” Turner said. “The project I’m most proud of is a wooden flashlight I originated and made from scratch.”

 Heymer, who plans to continue woodworking as a hobby after high school, built the bullet shelf and dresser in addition to the bullet bed he created his sophomore year for the same competition.

“It was inspired by a passion for hunting and a little side of redneck,” Heymer said. “I’ve never seen a bullet bed or dresser and neither had the other people who liked it. It’s one of a kind.”

Turner created a total of 21 projects for the competition.

“I worked all year and put in about 200 hours outside of class on my projects,” Turner said. “I decided to do so many because I wanted to win everything. I have a single class period so I couldn’t do a big project so I just did all of the little ones I could think of. “

Heymer said that the team was successful because of everyone’s passion for woodworking.

“Canyon did really good this year,” Turner said. “It was a good year. We had 24 first place medals out of 96 given out. We were successful because there were a lot of students who were really excited about their projects.”