Bodger
Image credit : © Copyright Peter Trimming and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
A Bodger is a craftsman, although in modern English the term has come to relate to bad workmanship as in 'bodge', however this may have developed through confusion with 'botch' which is likely to have originated in the late 1400's from bocchen which meant to repair and later by the 1500's meaning to repair clumsily, or to spoil by unskillful work.
However the original bodgers were wood turners from the Chilton forests in Buckinghamshire. The bodgers set up temporary workshops in woodlands, often using bent trees and frames to carry out turnery on branches or logs of beech coppice wood.
A bent wood tree acted as a spring to turn wood on a spindle allowing the use of a blade to shape the length of roundwood into different forms. In particular the bodgers would produce specifically shaped rungs, stretchers and legs for the Windsor chair (also known earlier as the Forest chair) which was manufactured in large numbers in High Wycombe.
This rare film footage from the 1900's records some of the original bodgers working in the chilterns, click on image below.
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings
- Beech coppice.
- Best Woods for Wood Carving.
- Carpentry.
- Chip carving.
- Physical Properties of Wood.
- The Art of Pyrography.
- Timber.
- The history and techniques of woodturning.
- The Differences Between Hardwood and Softwood
- Timber species
- Types of rapidly renewable content.
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