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Bodging
Bodging (full name chair-bodgering) 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 term bodger in reference to green woodworking appeared between 1799 and 1827 and, to a much lesser extent, from 1877 to 1886 and from 1939 to present.
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 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 Chairs" . Of the other craftsmen involved in the construction of a Windsor chair, one was the benchman who worked in a small town or village workshop and would produce the seats, backsplats and other sawn parts. The final craftsman involved was the framer. The framer would take the components produced by the bodger and the benchman and would assemble and finish the chair.
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 (£0.95) 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" (360 pence=£1.10s.-)
The rate of production was surprisingly high. According to Ronald Goodearl, who photographed two 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".
Although the last of the original itinerant bodgers were relegated to the history books in the 1950s the subsequent revival of interest in pole lathe turning since 1980, has seen many current chairmakers now calling themselves bodgers.
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Bodging
Bodging (full name chair-bodgering) 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 term bodger in reference to green woodworking appeared between 1799 and 1827 and, to a much lesser extent, from 1877 to 1886 and from 1939 to present.
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 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 Chairs" . Of the other craftsmen involved in the construction of a Windsor chair, one was the benchman who worked in a small town or village workshop and would produce the seats, backsplats and other sawn parts. The final craftsman involved was the framer. The framer would take the components produced by the bodger and the benchman and would assemble and finish the chair.
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 (£0.95) 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" (360 pence=£1.10s.-)
The rate of production was surprisingly high. According to Ronald Goodearl, who photographed two 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".
Although the last of the original itinerant bodgers were relegated to the history books in the 1950s the subsequent revival of interest in pole lathe turning since 1980, has seen many current chairmakers now calling themselves bodgers.