We’ve had a good summer with 3 meetings and 2 shows. Just one week after starting we demonstrated at the local Rural show, held in the grounds where we meet.

At one meeting we had a blacksmith turn up, who made a bowl turning tool for us. There are a couple of other blacksmiths who have just finished restoring the Forge next to the Mill. They will be running a business and we’ve talked to them about making tools for us.

Plans to restore the old lathes were put on hold when we arrived to find local kids had used most of our poles, wood and even part of the shelter, to make a bridge over the river. Although a bit annoyed, we had to concede that it was a brilliantly made bridge with handrails and some good knot work too (with the rope from our lathes).
We now keep some of the kit locked up at the Mill and haven’t had any more problems since. Someone will be living onsite from November and hopefully that will discourage any more vandalism.

We have had between 5 and 10 people at meetings and have had a couple of contacts come through the bodgers website.
We are continuing to meet on the first Sunday of the month. After the next meeting on the 1st of October we will be adjourning to the local pub to make plans for the winter and new year.

We had our first meeting on Sunday 4th June at Wellesbourne Watermill.
Some years ago someone built 3 lathes and a shave horse under a tarp as a sort of bodgers exhibition. There is a small A4 sing about the Chiltern Bodgers but years down the line it was all looking a bit sad.

But 5 of us spent the day putting a new tarp on the roof and renovating the lathes. (And weeding the area of nettles!)

Interestingly, there were 2 lathes with bowls left on, one of which was a partially completed nest of bowls.
These were well made lathes and operated by someone who knew what they were doing.
Jim Steele remembered an old chap who used to do talks and courses and it felt really good to be continuing someone else’s work.
Another year and the whole thing would have been scrap. It was nice to be rescuing it.
Another interesting point is that none of the poppets had cranks!
But they had all done some serious turning in the past.
I've never seen another lathe without a crank yet here were three of them.
I wondered if this could have been more common than I imagine in the past.
After the initial grunt we tried to get one lathe working. Needing some timber, we had a scavenge and the renovation of a building by the mill gave us a pile of timber to pick through. I'm not sure how safe the process was (walking over a pile of mostly rotten timber covered in nails) but we got enough wood to fix the shave horse and the lathe.


The icing on the cake was turning some Ash on the lathe for only five minutes at the end of the day but it was a nice finish.
There are 3 more meetings planned over the summer.
Please contact me for more details.

Matt Jarvis