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 Post subject: Who was
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 7:26 pm 
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Location: Rochester MN USA
the bodger?


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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 11:17 pm 
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a chair maker


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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 10:10 am 
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Yep, I'm with Daddy on this one.


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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:40 pm 
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Hey Newtooth,

The only thing that I would add is that he was an itinerant chair maker; someone who travelled from place to place, making a chair, or a stool with the materials at hand onsite.

Cheers,
Tom

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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 9:28 pm 
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And I think often out of green wood, but I may be wrong there.
eric


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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 9:36 pm 
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Hey Eric,

It's a near certainty. "Materials at hand", would mean, "that which they could glean from the nearby woods".

All you need to do is read Jenny Alexander's book, How to make a chair from a tree, to appreciate the way a shrinking green joint can tighten up a chair.

Cheers,
Tom

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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 5:55 am 
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Back before machines, folks did things for themselves. Bodgers did things to a workable standard, leaving elegance and pretense to others.

English turners took the title of bodgers, and use it proudly, as any search on the term itself or especially Robin Wood http://www.robin-wood.co.uk/ will show. Bunch of guys who went TO the woods (High Wycombe) to make chair parts by the bundle, for resale to chair makers. They didn't normally finish the chairs themselves. Beech and sycamore, which is what they called their maple, made the legs and uprights, with ash popular for spindles. They went to the woods with tools, built the lathes and horses there, and camped out while the weather was good and the timber fresh.

Quick Wikipedia entry corresponds to the history as given by bodgers on the web. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodging

Alive and well. https://www.bodgers.org.uk/


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 Post subject: Re: Who was
PostPosted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 9:30 pm 
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WOW, chips and shavings galore. It seems that everyone got a piece of this one. This is fun!!! There are some source urls posted in the answers which should take care of the facts. My understanding is that a bodger was, as TMS pointed out, a traveler. The bodger did indeed work with green wood as ERIC mentions. As DADDY GLOVES posted and DENNIS S concurred a bodger was a chair maker but I think that he became one here on the West side of the pond. NB GEORGE hits the essence of "a bodger" with his post. The earlier workmen were travelers who took their breakdown lathes and shave horses into the woods and selected and harvested material to turn chair parts and as the post continues the bodger sold larger lots of chair parts to makers who assembled the chairs.. The point about a greenwood joint swelling/shrinking for a reply tight long lasting fit hasn't changed it is a trick mother nature helps us with.


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