Page 68 - Australian Wood Review №103 2019
P. 68
WOODTURNING
Made by
Hand...and Leg
Jeff Donne shows how the power of the ancient pole lathe lives on.
his guy at a village fair eyed me What we do know, however, is that
Tup and down. With a befuddled pole lathes are surprisingly efficient
look on his face, his gaze moved to machines that are easy to use
the contraption I was leaning on like given time, and they offer a deeply
a straw-chewing farmer on a lunch- satisfying way of working with wood.
time break.
How it works
‘Is that a guillotine?’ he said, A pole lathe is a reciprocating lathe,
scratching his chin. And so begins which means the blank being turned
our beguiling journey into antiquity spins in alternate directions. The blank
and kookiness that is a pole lathe. is driven with a strip of cord that’s
wrapped twice around and attached to
These ancient contraptions with something springy at one end, and a
roots lost in the sawdust of time were foot operated treadle at the other.
the tools of bodgers, the itinerant
woodworkers from 17th century When your foot pushes the treadle the
Buckinghamshire who made chair blank is turned towards a sharp tool
parts from trees in the woods, waiting to craft anything from chair
emerging only after the sun had set legs to baby rattles, and when you lift
on a day of hard graft. your foot back up, the blank turns in
the opposite direction.
Some say this is where the bodgers
got their name, their profession being That’s right, a pole lathe only cuts
a corruption of ‘badger’, that stripy- wood for half the time you are
headed, ill-tempered combination of actually at the machine. So if you
wombat and Tasmanian devil that are spending a couple of hours
snuffles around English woodlands turning some Windsor chair legs,
and gardens at night. about an hour of that is down time,
albeit spread over about a thousand
Others say the bodgers are individual rest periods; it’s like work
responsible for the badge of dishonour and smoko rolled into one.
bestowed upon fly-by-night tradies
who build houses without roofs and The rhythm you achieve with a
other ‘bodgie jobs’, because bodgers, reciprocating lathe is actually a
who made parts for chair builders, beautiful thing. With some practice
were masters of doing half the job. you develop a gentle rocking motion
68 Australian Wood Review
