AN apprentice cabinet-maker who was pipped at the post in a national competition will travel to the international finals in Japan after all.

Liam Gardner, 18, from Gilling West, near Richmond, was second in the UK Skills contest in Warwickshire, and thought he had lost out on a trip to Japan for the World Skills tournament in November.

But organisers were so impressed with his work and, recognising that he had a chance to qualify for the competition in the future, they arranged for him to visit the Far East.

He will spend five days at the competition, which is open to under-21s, to learn what the judges would look for if he qualified in 2009, when the finals will be held in Canada.

York College student Liam, an apprentice at Philip Bastow's workshop in Reeth, said: "I am young enough to go forward for 2009, and they are sending me to Japan to get a better grasp of what the international competitions are like."

In the Warwickshire contest, he had 18 hours to make a cabinet that would normally be built in at least 24 hours.

Liam, a former pupil of St Francis Xavier School, in Richmond, said: "The pressure was on, but I finished it.

"The man who won had four years' experience and I have only 18 months, so I was quite pleased."

His father, David, said his son had always been interested in woodwork and had made his mother a horse tack box when he was 14.