Pole Lathes & Bodgers

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 reciprocal, the work rotates in one direction and then back the other way. Turning is only carried out on the down stroke of the treadle, the spring of the pole only being sufficient to return the treadle to the raised position ready for the next down stroke.

While the action of the polelathe and the skills required are similar to those employed on a modern power lathe, the fundamental difference is that the timber used on a polelathe is unseasoned and freshly felled. The angle that the tools are ground is closer to that of a carpenter’s chisel than that of a power lathe tool.

Take note, using powerlathe tools on a polelathe is safe but hard work. Taking a polelathe chisel to a power lathe is to risk serious injury since the forces are such that the blade is likely to break.

The pole lathe’s origin is lost in antiquity, we know that Vikings used them from the archaeological finds discovered beneath the modern city of York in England. The use of pole lathes died out in England after the World War II.

It has seen a return through the increased interest in green woodwork, although the majority of practitioners are at the hobby rather than professional level.

Bodging is a traditional wood-turning craft, using green or unseasoned timber to create cylindrical wooden woodturning via a traditional wooden-bed polelathe. Itmes produced are most commonly chair legs and stretcher poles, historically this was for the Windsor chair manufacturing industry in England.

Traditionally, a bodger would buy a stand of trees from a local estate, 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 that was traditionally 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, or 144, 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.