The Bodgers’ Axe
While Bodger sounds like an insult to me, it was actually the name for a traditional UK craftsman who focused on turning wood for green wood to make chairs (more on this below).
The bodgers’ axe or chair makers’ axe was a one-handed tool used for rough-shaping chair legs, spacers, and spindles out of green wood before they were finished with a lathe or draw knife. They typically have a wide blade, single-bevelled head with a short, offset, and uniquely shaped handle to allow for precise work.
Unlike some specialized axes, there wasn’t a model or pattern made specifically for use as a bodger’s axe. A bodger would find an axe head that suited his liking, and make a handle that fit his need and preference. Meaning no two bodgers’ axes look exactly alike.
The heads were typically single-bevelled to allow the axe to shave flush surfaces and remove wood in thin slices rather than chopping. The cutting edge would be broad and slightly curved, and the heads were relatively heavy for their size, giving them both control and power.
The handles are typically quite short, especially given the heavier weight of the head. The handles could often be drastically curved or offset from the blade. This design ensures the user’s hand clears the work surface during hewing strokes, working around curves.
Together, these features made the bodger’s axe a precision tool for stock removal—able to turn a rough split log into a smooth blank ready for further shaping.
How a Bodgers Axe was Used
Bodgers were specialist chair part makers who typically worked in the beech woods of southern England, especially around High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Their task was to produce legs and stretchers for Windsor chairs, a popular style of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Instead of hauling logs to a workshop, bodgers set up temporary camps in the forest, working close to the raw material.
The bodgers’ axe was used for rapidly rough shaping raw wood into manageable parts. Its single-bevel edge meant it could function like a chisel, shaving wood cleanly along the grain. This efficiency was the key to the bodger’s productivity and livelihood.
The process began by splitting a beech log into billets using wedges or a froe. Each billet was then roughly shaped with the bodger’s axe. With controlled, slicing strokes, the craftsman could square the billet, taper its ends, or round its profile. The axe work was efficient enough to remove large amounts of waste wood, yet precise enough to leave a clean, flat surface.
After this rough hewing, the blanks were refined with a drawknife on a shave horse and then turned on a foot-powered pole lathe. Because the axe had already done the heavy shaping, the lathe work went quickly. A skilled bodger could produce up to 144 chair legs in a single day, starting from green logs.
This video doesn’t show a lot of axe work, but it’s still interesting:
A More Detailed History
University of Reading, Europe – CC BY-NC-SA
This side axe is a a chairmaker’s axe, used for preparing wood for lathe work. It was made by W. Bricknall, a blacksmith at Stokenchurch sometime before 1856, the year in which he left the area. It was made for the donor’s grandfather, who was a chair bodger, and who specified its design, including the unusual edge bevelled on one side only. The sheath was made by the donor, to protect the cutting edge. The blade is inscribed ‘W. Bricknall, Stokenchurch’.
The history of the bodger’s axe is tied directly to the evolution of chair making in Britain. Windsor chairs first became popular in the 1700s. These chairs, with their solid wooden seat and turned legs, required large quantities of small, turned components. To meet the demand, an industry developed in the beech forests of the Chiltern Hills.
By the late 18th century, groups of craftsmen (later called bodgers) had established a system of woodland production. Each bodger specialized in turning chair parts from freshly felled beech.
Records show that by the early 1800s, the practice of bodging was firmly rooted in Buckinghamshire and neighboring regions, and by the mid-1800s, High Wycombe had become the center of England’s chair-making industry.
As the industry matured, bodgers came to prefer axes from certain well-known brands. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, makers like W. Gilpin and Whitehouse supplied high-quality side axes. Anecdotes from the mid-20th century recall bodgers swearing by their Gilpin axes as the only “proper” tool for the trade.
The community of bodgers around High Wycombe persisted into the 20th century. Around 1900 there were still 30 or more men working in the woods, supplying chair legs to local factories. Even as mechanization advanced, the bodgers’ traditional methods remained competitive because of their efficiency and low overhead. They lived simply in woodland huts or commuted from nearby villages, felling trees, splitting billets, and shaping parts with axe, drawknife, and lathe.
The trade survived into the 1940s, when the last of the professional bodgers continued to produce legs during wartime shortages. By the 1950s, however, the practice had largely disappeared as furniture factories adopted modern machinery. The bodger’s axe, once the cornerstone of a rural cottage industry, became an artifact of the past.
Today, there has been a bit of a green woodworking revival. Modern chair makers and hobbyists still use side axes to shape green wood, valuing the tool for the same qualities that made it indispensable two centuries ago. Its design has changed little: a broad, single-bevel blade and an offset handle, perfectly suited to shaving wood with speed and accuracy.
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