Bodging
Encyclopedia
Bodging is a traditional wood-turning craft
, using green (unseasoned) wood to create cylindrical wood
en woodturning via a traditional wooden-bed, polelathe
, most commonly chair legs and stretcher poles, historically for the Windsor chair
manufacturing industry.
or birch
+suffix
-er
- one who works or is involved with beech
or birch
- common woods employed by the bodger. Another theory is that bodges, defined as rough sacks of corn, closely resembled packages of finished goods the bodgers carried when they left the forest or workshop. Yet another theory is that bodger was a corruption of badger
, as similarly to the behaviour of a badger, the bodger dwelt in the wood
s and seldom emerged until evenings.
Note: There is no known etymology of the modern term bodger referring to skilled woodworkers. It first appears c1910, and only applied to a few dozen turners around High Wycombe, the reference quoted above dated 1879 can not refer to this type of bodger. All the hypotheses above are pure guesswork and not supported by etymologists. The etymology of the bodger and botcher (poor workmanship) is well recorded from Shakespeare onwards the two terms are synonymous.
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's or bodging tools included:
ed 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 water-proof thatch roof. The "sides" of the shelter may have been enclosed in wicker
or wattled
manner to keep out driving rain, animals, etc.
Note: It should be noted that these "camps" were not where the bodgers lived, just where they worked during the day. They lived in cottages in the villages of the area and walked to work each day. They were no more "itinerant" than a modern day dry stone waller or thatcher.
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
factory
methods.
in Buckinghamshire
, England
. Bodgers were highly-skilled itinerant
wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods of the Chiltern Hills
.
The term and trade also spread to Ireland
and Scotland
.
The term was always confined to High Wycombe until the recent (post 1980) revival of pole lathe turning with many chairmakers around the country now calling themselves bodgers. Chairs were made and parts turned in all parts of the UK before the semi industrialised production of High Wycombe. As well recorded in Cotton the English Regional Chair
Bodgers also sold their waste product as kindling, or as exceptionally durable woven-baskets.
Chair bodgers were one of three types of craftsmen associated with the making of the traditional country "Windsor Chair
" chairs.
In the early years of the 20th century, there were about 30 chair bodgers scattered within the vicinity of the High Wycombe
furniture trade. Although there was great camaraderie and kinship amongst this close community nevertheless a professional eye was kept upon what each other was doing. Most important to the bodger was which company did his competitors supply and at what price.
Bodger Samuel Rockall's account book for 1908 shows he was receiving 19 shillings (95p) for a gross
(144 units) of plain legs including stretchers. With three stretchers to a set of four legs this amounted to 242 turnings in total.
Another account states: "a bodger worked ten hours a day, six concurrent days a week, in all weathers, only earning thirty shillings a week" (150 pence=£
1-10 s
).
The rate of production was surprisingly high. According to Ronald Goodearl, who photographed one of the last professional bodgers Alec and Owen Dean in the late 1940s, recalled they had stated "each man would turn out 144 parts per day (one gross) including legs and stretchers- this would include cutting up the green wood, and turning it into blanks, then turning it".
, 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 pieces into chair legs. The drawknife
would farther refine the leg shape. The finishing stage was turning the leg with the pole lathe (the pole lathe was made on site). Once the leg or stretchers were finished, being of "green" wood, they required seasoning. Chair legs would be stored in piles until the quota (usually a gross
of legs and the requisite stretchers) was complete. The bodger would then take their work to one of the large chair-making centres. The largest consumer of the day was the High Wycombe Windsor chair industry.
and follows the complete process using Sam’s own tools and equipment. A film copy is available at the Wycombe Museum
.
Another famous contemporary bodger is Dr S. Mcghee, who introduced his trade for charitable reasons to the Xagar in Tibet
in the 1990s.
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" - a bruise or carbuncle, typically in the field of DIY, though often in fashion magazines to describe poorly executed cosmetic surgery. A "bodged" DIY job is serviceable: a "botched" DIY one most certainly is not- but a total failure.
Craft
A craft is a branch of a profession that requires some particular kind of skilled work. In historical sense, particularly as pertinent to the Medieval history and earlier, the term is usually applied towards people occupied in small-scale production of goods.-Development from the past until...
, using green (unseasoned) wood to create cylindrical wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
en woodturning via a traditional wooden-bed, polelathe
Polelathe
A pole lathe is a wood-turning lathe that uses a long pole as a return spring for a treadle. Pressing the treadle with your foot pulls on a cord that is wrapped around the piece of wood or billet being turned. The other end of the cord reaches up to the end of a long springy pole. As the action is...
, most commonly chair legs and stretcher poles, historically for the Windsor chair
Windsor chair
A Windsor chair is a chair built with a solid wooden seat into which the chair-back and legs are dowelled, or pushed into drilled holes, in contrast to standard chairs, where the back legs and the uprights of the back are continuous. The seats of Windsor chairs were often carved into a shallow dish...
manufacturing industry.
Etymology
The origins of the term are obscure. It may be a folk extension of beechBeech
Beech is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia and North America.-Habit:...
or birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
+suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-er
Agent noun
In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action. For example, "driver" is an agent noun formed from the verb "drive". The endings "-er", "-or", and "-ist" are commonly used in English to form agent...
- one who works or is involved with beech
Beech
Beech is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia and North America.-Habit:...
or birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
- common woods employed by the bodger. Another theory is that bodges, defined as rough sacks of corn, closely resembled packages of finished goods the bodgers carried when they left the forest or workshop. Yet another theory is that bodger was a corruption of badger
Badger
Badgers are short-legged omnivores in the weasel family, Mustelidae. There are nine species of badger, in three subfamilies : Melinae , Mellivorinae , and Taxideinae...
, as similarly to the behaviour of a badger, the bodger dwelt in the wood
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
s and seldom emerged until evenings.
Note: There is no known etymology of the modern term bodger referring to skilled woodworkers. It first appears c1910, and only applied to a few dozen turners around High Wycombe, the reference quoted above dated 1879 can not refer to this type of bodger. All the hypotheses above are pure guesswork and not supported by etymologists. The etymology of the bodger and botcher (poor workmanship) is well recorded from Shakespeare onwards the two terms are synonymous.
Tools
Common bodger's or bodging tools included:
- the polelathePolelatheA pole lathe is a wood-turning lathe that uses a long pole as a return spring for a treadle. Pressing the treadle with your foot pulls on a cord that is wrapped around the piece of wood or billet being turned. The other end of the cord reaches up to the end of a long springy pole. As the action is...
and a variety of chiselChiselA chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal. The handle and blade of some types of chisel are made of metal or wood with a sharp edge in it.In use, the chisel is forced into the material...
s, and likely sharpening stoneSharpening stoneSharpening stones, water stones or whetstones are used to grind and hone the edges of steel tools and implements. Examples of items that may be sharpened with a sharpening stone include scissors, scythes, knives, razors and tools such as chisels, hand scrapers and plane blades...
s or grinding wheelGrinding wheelA grinding wheel is an expendable wheel that is composed of an abrasive compound used for various grinding and abrasive machining operations...
for honingHôneHône is a town and comune in the Aosta Valley region of north-western Italy.-Twin towns:twin towns with the year of its establishing:# Nora Municipality, Sweden...
the rapidly blunted tools (which are blunted far more rapidly than if used to shape seasoned wood stockStockThe capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
- for turning and finishing the chair leg or stretcherStretcherA stretcher is a medical device used to carry casualties or an incapacitated person from one place to another. It is a simple type of litter, and still called by that name in some cases....
pole (the horizontalHorizontal planeIn geometry, physics, astronomy, geography, and related sciences, a plane is said to be horizontal at a given point if it is perpendicular to the gradient of the gravity field at that point— in other words, if apparent gravity makes a plumb bob hang perpendicular to the plane at that point.In...
structural member joining the chair-legs- to prevent them splaySplaySplay may refer to:*Splay, a verb meaning slant, slope or spread outwards*Splay , the difference between urine threshold and saturation*Splay , a J-pop band from Osaka...
ing - the spokeshaveSpokeshaveA spokeshave is a tool used to shape and smooth wooden rods and shafts - often for use as wheel spokes, chair legs ,, self bows,and arrows. It can also be used to carve canoe paddles.-Modern:...
-like drawknifeDrawknifeA drawknife is a traditional woodworking hand tool used to shape wood by removing shavings. It consists of a blade with a handle at each end. The blade is much longer than it is deep...
: for crudely rounding billetBilletA billet is a term for living quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, it referred to a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier....
s of green wood to be intermediately finished for the wood-turner. This is because "green" wood is far easier to slice near-finished to shape with the grain than to cut against the grain as per turning on the lathe. - trestleTrestleA trestle is a rigid frame used as a support, especially referring to a bridge composed of a number of short spans supported by such frames. In the context of trestle bridges, each supporting frame is generally referred to as a bent...
or saw-horse (likely fabricated in the forest as required) - a coarse sawSawA saw is a tool that uses a hard blade or wire with an abrasive edge to cut through softer materials. The cutting edge of a saw is either a serrated blade or an abrasive...
: for cutting fallen or newly felled wood to length - axeAxeThe axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood; to harvest timber; as a weapon; and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol...
s and adzeAdzeAn adze is a tool used for smoothing or carving rough-cut wood in hand woodworking. Generally, the user stands astride a board or log and swings the adze downwards towards his feet, chipping off pieces of wood, moving backwards as they go and leaving a relatively smooth surface behind...
s: for hewingHewingHewing is the process of converting sections of a tree stem from its rounded natural form into a form with more or less flat surfaces using primarily, among other tools, an axe or axes...
wood into rough billetBilletA billet is a term for living quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, it referred to a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier....
s - a shave horseShave horseShave horses are a combination of vice and workbench, used for green woodworking. A foot-actuated clamp holds the work piece securely against pulling forces, especially as when shaped with a drawknife or spokeshave....
to firmly hold the wooden billets for using the drawknifeDrawknifeA drawknife is a traditional woodworking hand tool used to shape wood by removing shavings. It consists of a blade with a handle at each end. The blade is much longer than it is deep...
Accommodation
A bodger commonly campCampsite
A campsite or camping pitch is a place used for overnight stay in the outdoors. In British English a campsite is an area, usually divided into a number of pitches, where people can camp overnight using tents or camper vans or caravans; this British English use of the word is synonymous with the...
ed in the open woods
Woodland
Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...
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
Twine
Twine is a light string or strong thread composed of two or more smaller strands or yarns twisted together. More generally, the term can be applied to any thin cord....
, together to form a simple triangular frame for water-proof thatch roof. The "sides" of the shelter may have been enclosed in wicker
Wicker
Wicker is hard woven fiber formed into a rigid material, usually used for baskets or furniture. Wicker is often made of material of plant origin, but plastic fibers are also used....
or wattled
Wattle and daub
Wattle and daub is a composite building material used for making walls, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw...
manner to keep out driving rain, animals, etc.
Note: It should be noted that these "camps" were not where the bodgers lived, just where they worked during the day. They lived in cottages in the villages of the area and walked to work each day. They were no more "itinerant" than a modern day dry stone waller or thatcher.
High Wycombe lathe
High-Wycombe lathe became a commonly used genericColloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
term to describe any wooden-bed pole lathe
Lathe
A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.Lathes are used in woodturning,...
, 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
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...
factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
methods.
History
The term was once common around the furniture-making town of High WycombeHigh Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Bodgers were highly-skilled itinerant
Itinerant
An itinerant is a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home. The term comes from the late 16th century: from late Latin itinerant , from the verb itinerari, from Latin iter, itiner ....
wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods of the Chiltern Hills
Chiltern Hills
The Chiltern Hills form a chalk escarpment in South East England. They are known locally as "the Chilterns". A large portion of the hills was designated officially as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1965.-Location:...
.
The term and trade also spread to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
.
The term was always confined to High Wycombe until the recent (post 1980) revival of pole lathe turning with many chairmakers around the country now calling themselves bodgers. Chairs were made and parts turned in all parts of the UK before the semi industrialised production of High Wycombe. As well recorded in Cotton the English Regional Chair
Bodgers also sold their waste product as kindling, or as exceptionally durable woven-baskets.
Chair bodgers were one of three types of craftsmen associated with the making of the traditional country "Windsor Chair
Windsor chair
A Windsor chair is a chair built with a solid wooden seat into which the chair-back and legs are dowelled, or pushed into drilled holes, in contrast to standard chairs, where the back legs and the uprights of the back are continuous. The seats of Windsor chairs were often carved into a shallow dish...
" chairs.
In the early years of the 20th century, there were about 30 chair bodgers scattered within the vicinity of the High Wycombe
High Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
furniture trade. Although there was great camaraderie and kinship amongst this close community nevertheless a professional eye was kept upon what each other was doing. Most important to the bodger was which company did his competitors supply and at what price.
Bodger Samuel Rockall's account book for 1908 shows he was receiving 19 shillings (95p) for a gross
Gross (unit)
A gross is equal to a dozen dozen, i.e. 12 × 12 = 144.It can be used in duodecimal counting. The use of gross likely originated from the fact that 144 can be counted on the fingers using the fingertips and first two joints of each finger when marked by the thumb of one hand. The other hand...
(144 units) of plain legs including stretchers. With three stretchers to a set of four legs this amounted to 242 turnings in total.
Another account states: "a bodger worked ten hours a day, six concurrent days a week, in all weathers, only earning thirty shillings a week" (150 pence=£
Pound (currency)
The pound is a unit of currency in some nations. The term originated in England as the value of a pound of silver.The word pound is the English translation of the Latin word libra, which was the unit of account of the Roman Empire...
1-10 s
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
).
The rate of production was surprisingly high. According to Ronald Goodearl, who photographed one of the last professional bodgers Alec and Owen Dean in the late 1940s, recalled they had stated "each man would turn out 144 parts per day (one gross) including legs and stretchers- this would include cutting up the green wood, and turning it into blanks, then turning it".
Bodger's method
Traditionally, a bodger would buy a stand of trees from a local estateEstate (house)
An estate comprises the houses and outbuildings and supporting farmland and woods that surround the gardens and grounds of a very large property, such as a country house or mansion. It is the modern term for a manor, but lacks the latter's now abolished jurisdictional authority...
, set up a place to live (his bodger's hovel
Hovel
Hovel can mean:*A small poor-quality house: see wikt:hovel*Hövels is a municipality in the district of Altenkirchen, in Rhineland-Palatinate, in western Germany....
) 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 pieces into chair legs. The drawknife
Drawknife
A drawknife is a traditional woodworking hand tool used to shape wood by removing shavings. It consists of a blade with a handle at each end. The blade is much longer than it is deep...
would farther refine the leg shape. The finishing stage was turning the leg with the pole lathe (the pole lathe was made on site). Once the leg or stretchers were finished, being of "green" wood, they required seasoning. Chair legs would be stored in piles until the quota (usually a gross
Gross (unit)
A gross is equal to a dozen dozen, i.e. 12 × 12 = 144.It can be used in duodecimal counting. The use of gross likely originated from the fact that 144 can be counted on the fingers using the fingertips and first two joints of each finger when marked by the thumb of one hand. The other hand...
of legs and the requisite stretchers) was complete. The bodger would then take their work to one of the large chair-making centres. The largest consumer of the day was the High Wycombe Windsor chair industry.
Notable bodgers
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 furniture manufacturer Parker KnollParker Knoll
Parker Knoll is a British furniture manufacturing company, originally formed by Frederick Parker, a British furniture manufacturer, and Willi Knoll, a German inventor of a new form of sprung furniture. With roots in the manufacture of high-quality furniture, the brand concentrated on mass-market...
and follows the complete process using Sam’s own tools and equipment. A film copy is available at the Wycombe Museum
Wycombe Museum
Wycombe Museum is a free local museum located in the town of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is run by Wycombe District Council....
.
Another famous contemporary bodger is Dr S. Mcghee, who introduced his trade for charitable reasons to the Xagar in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
in the 1990s.
English slang
In contemporary British EnglishBritish English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
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" - a bruise or carbuncle, typically in the field of DIY, though often in fashion magazines to describe poorly executed cosmetic surgery. A "bodged" DIY job is serviceable: a "botched" DIY one most certainly is not- but a total failure.
External links
- Green Wood Work
- Guide to Bodging
- The Chair Bodgers of Buckinghamshire
- The Association of Polelathe Turners and Greenwood Workers
- The last Chiltern chair bodger photographic memorial of Owen Dean and his workshop