Bodging

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.

Traditionally, bodgers were highly skilled wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods of the Chiltern Hills.

[6] 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.

[7] In the early years of the 20th century, there were about 30 chair bodgers scattered within the vicinity of the High Wycombe furniture trade.

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.

The Oxford English Dictionary Supplement of 1972 has two definitions for bodger, one is a local dialect word from Buckinghamshire, for chair leg turner.

[1] In Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language published in 1766, the Shakespearean use of the word "bodged", means to "boggle".

[15] Other definitions of the word bodge taken from Robert Hunter's "The encyclopædic dictionary", suggest that it could also be a corruption of "botch", meaning "patch", or a measurement of capacity equivalent to half a peck - equal to 1 imperial gallon (4.5 L).

[16] There is a hypothesis that bodges, defined as rough sacks of corn, closely resembled packages of finished goods the bodgers carried when they left the forest or workshop.

Or possibly it may have been a derogatory term used by workers in furniture factories, referring to the men who worked in the woods that produced the “incomplete” chair parts.

The colour film was produced by the furniture manufacturer Parker Knoll and follows the complete process using Sam's own tools and equipment.

[8] 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.

Douglas and Lucretia Bodger were brother-and-sister characters in the comic strip 'Flook', which appeared in the U.K. Daily Mail newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s.

He had earned the moniker from supporters through being employed in the town's furniture industry, but admitted in an interview after his playing career that he had never worked as an itinerant turner in the woods.