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- The bodger would press down the treadle causing the wood being worked on to spin in one direction. He would use a chisel rested on the 'tool rest' to cut the wood to the required shape.
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Bodging (full name chair-bodgering[a]) is a traditional woodturning craft, using green (unseasoned) wood to make chair legs and other cylindrical parts of chairs. The work was done close to where a tree was felled. The itinerant craftsman who made the chair legs was known as a bodger or chair-bodger. According to Collins Dictionary, the use of ...
The bodger would press down the treadle causing the wood being worked on to spin in one direction. He would use a chisel rested on the 'tool rest' to cut the wood to the required shape.
- History
- Etymology
- Tools
- Accommodation
- High Wycombe Lathe
- Working Practices
- Notable Bodgers
- Cultural References
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The term was once common around the furniture-making town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. Traditionally, bodgers were highly skilled wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods of the Chiltern Hills. The term and trade also spread to Ireland and Scotland. Chairs were made and parts turned in all parts of the UK before the semi industri...
The origins of the term are obscure. A few dozen chair leg turners around High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire are called this .
The bodger's equipment was so easy to move and set up that it was easier to go to the timber and work it there than to transport it to a workshop. The completed chair legs were sold to furniture factories to be married with other chair parts made in the workshop. Common bodger'sor bodging tools included: 1. the polelathe and a variety of gouges and...
A bodger commonly camped in the open woods in a "bodger's hovel" or basic "lean-to"-type shelter constructed of forest-floor lengths suitable for use as poles lashed, likely with twine, together to form a simple triangular frame for a waterproof thatch roof. The "sides" of the shelter may have been enclosed in wicker or wattledmanner to keep out dr...
High-Wycombe lathe became a commonly used generic term to describe any wooden-bed pole lathe, irrespective of user or location, and remained the bodger's preferred lathe until the 1960s when the trade died out, losing to the more cost-effective and rapid mechanised mass production factorymethods.
Traditionally, a bodger would buy a stand of trees from a local estate, set up a place to live (his bodger's hovel) and work close to trees. After felling a suitable tree, the bodger would cut the tree into billets, approximately the length of a chair leg. The billet would then be split using a wedge. Using the side-axe, he would roughly shape the ...
Samuel Rockall learnt the trade from his uncle, Jimmy Rockall. At the age of 61, Samuel was almost the last of the living chair bodgers. Rockall's bodging tradition was captured on film shortly after he died in 1962. His two sons helped in the reconstruction of his working life in the woods and his workshop. The colour film was produced by the furn...
In contemporary British English slang, bodging can also refer to a job done of necessity using whatever tools and materials come to hand and which, whilst not necessarily elegant, is nevertheless serviceable. Bodged should not be confused with a "botched" job: a poor, incompetent or shoddy example of work, deriving from the mediaeval word "botch" –...
Nov 20, 2015 · Bodgers would head into the woods to turn chair legs from recently cut, green (or unseasoned) timber, which were then slotted into an unseasoned seat in a wedge tenon joint. As the wood dried...
Feb 25, 2017 · Bodgers were wood turners who worked in the beech woods around the furniture-making town of High Wycombe in England. They would cut, split and turn the beech trees where they fell, then sell the legs and stretchers to another shop where the chairs were assembled.
Once the timber had been felled, in the autumn or early winter, the timber would be cut to length by hand over a saw-pit, and then split open using a molly (or 'beetle') and wedge, to form a billet - one with a lot of knots being a crooked billet.
Feb 15, 2016 · Traditional Craftsman Ben Chester builds a Bodger's Den and explains about the art of building with what's available in your woodland. For more info on the work that Ben does, please visit www.benchester.co.uk
