The John Stevenson Trophy 2020

Many readers and forum members will remember John Stevenson, a contributor to MEW but best known for his larger-than life presence on the Model Engineer forum.

Funded by many donations in his memory, the Stevenson Cup was first awarded in 2018. The cup is engraved “John Stevenson, 1948 – 2017, Remembered by his many friends” with “Awarded for Excellence in Practical and Useful Workshop Equipment” on the plinth.

The John Stevenson Trophy is presented for just that, a well-made and usable piece of tooling, a modification to a machine or an accessory for a tool where the fact it works well is more important than making it look good. Unlike traditional judged trophies, we decided on a different approach to reflect John’s reticence about traditional competitions. After a call for nominations, a small panel of judges selected a shortlist, on which there was an online vote.

In 2018 it was won by John Ashton and in 2019 the award went to Michael Cox.

In a strange twist of fate, the current coronavirus lockdown means that it’s unlikely there will be any traditional engineering competitions over this year’s exhibition season. The ‘virtual’ nature of the Stephenson Trophy competition means that we can forge ahead with it this year.

In view of the unusual circumstances, we have decided to once again make the competition open to all. Any reader or forum member may enter their own work. We have also extended the deadline until the end of June to allow people to make (or finish off or simply tidy up an existing project) during this lockdown period.