Confessions of a Bodger

[Geoff Jackson]

Absolutely BEB and Donald! Just watch Captain Slow rebuild a Suffolk Punch lawnmower - brings tears to the eyes.

My apprenticeship taught soldering, cable looming, repairing, fault finding - not box changing. I love reclaiming things including broken planes. We can learn a lot from old fashioned (so called) economics

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Don Fry]

Sorry lads, I do not associate with Captain Slow mentioned above. A waste of a good brain, little to admire but the salary.

[Dai Fledermaus]

Later today, I have to go to my son in law's house remove the 13amp plug from an electric fire, thread the cable through a hole and fit a new plug.

The conversation with my wife went something like this:-

Do they have a new plug I ask. Oh I don't know says my wife, can't you use the old one? No I said because all new style plugs are sealed and you can't reuse them. Can't we pick one up on the way she asked? We could I said but B&Q is just a short walk for them, why not ask the them to get one this morning. Will they know what type to get she asked? Trying to retain some sense of calm, it's a standard 13amp plug I reply. It doesn't work, she senses my frustration. What's the matter with you she askes? Oh nothing I say as I go back to reading my paper.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

[ron evans]

Dai, let them get on with it and come flying instead

[Phil Brooks]

We recently bought a new washing machine, which of course needed to be fitted under a worktop. The best option for supplying power was a 13A socket above the said worktop. The delivery guy told me that if I cut the fitted plug off to allow the cable to be fed through an access hole that would invalidate the machine's warranty. My only option was to fit a short extension cable from the socket to a flying socket below the worktop, allowing me to plug in the machine's power cable below the worktop, i.e. to bodge the job.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Posted by Dai Fledermaus on 22/01/2017 10:58:00:

Later today, I have to go to my son in law's house remove the 13amp plug from an electric fire, thread the cable through a hole and fit a new plug.

The conversation with my wife went something like this:-

Do they have a new plug I ask. Oh I don't know says my wife, can't you use the old one? No I said because all new style plugs are sealed and you can't reuse them. Can't we pick one up on the way she asked? We could I said but B&Q is just a short walk for them, why not ask the them to get one this morning. Will they know what type to get she asked? Trying to retain some sense of calm, it's a standard 13amp plug I reply. It doesn't work, she senses my frustration. What's the matter with you she askes? Oh nothing I say as I go back to reading my paper.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I can so identify with that story!!!

My son and his partner bought a small item of self-assembly furniture. They asked if I could put it together for them! Well,....OK, if that's really necessary.

A few days later we arrive at his house - "Where is this thing you want assembling?" I ask,....I have a look, suss out the job, turn to number one child and say; "OK I need a cross-head screwdriver" Blank stare. "A Philips Screwdriver - yes?"

It turns out he has no tools in the house - not even a screwdriver. He's the son of an engineer and an aeromodeller - where did I go wrong?

We have to drive to B&Q to buy him some basic tools.

BEB

[Dai Fledermaus]

Posted by ron evans on 22/01/2017 11:17:32:

Dai, let them get on with it and come flying instead

I wish I could Ron, but our Son in law is only 42 he hasn't learned yet how to hold a screwdriver, or a paintbrush or any hand tool for that matter. presumably that's why he doesn't have any.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Snap!

[Barrie Dav 2]

................................................................................. sorry lost for words

[Cliff Bastow]

I work as a Maintenance Engineer in a large factory and I am known as a bodger by some of my young colleagues! what this means in practice is that I am prepared to take stuff apart and have a go at mending it, not just throwing it away and fit a new one as they always seem to want to. Do I always succeed? no but sometimes I do.

Case in point, today one of the engineers changed a label printer that would not work, no power. He labeled the removed one up to go back for repair. I thought I will have a quick look, took of the cover to find the neutral wire had come loose from the power socket. ten minutes with a soldering iron and all working fine. his comments was how did you know to do that? and this from someone with a HNC in engineering!

Now I don't want to sound like an old fart but sometimes I wonder what is being taught in colleges these days. they can run rings around me with computers and programming but common sense and thinking for yourself, not much of it from what I see. I understand they don't yet have my years of experience but come on. It seems as if they cant find what to do on Google then they are lost.

Bodger? maybe but If I am I am proud of it, and know that several times I have kept the factory running when no spares are immediately available.

Edited By Cliff Bastow on 22/01/2017 13:14:12

[Geoff S]

Posted by Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 22/01/2017 12:46:24:

A few days later we arrive at his house - "Where is this thing you want assembling?" I ask,....I have a look, suss out the job, turn to number one child and say; "OK I need a cross-head screwdriver" Blank stare. "A Philips Screwdriver - yes?"

It turns out he has no tools in the house - not even a screwdriver. He's the son of an engineer and an aeromodeller - where did I go wrong?

We have to drive to B&Q to buy him some basic tools.

BEB

Words fail me. I simply can't imagine having no tools. I've always had access to them, in fact my earliest memories are of my grandfather working at his bench repairing watches and my being given old radios (pre-WW2) to take apart to salvage the components before I even started school. After my mother died, Dad used to take me into Nottingham with him each Wednesday afternoon where he visited the wholesalers to restock the shop and that included a visit to Pools Tools.

Of course my friends and I made our own 'waggons' - wooden planks with a steering at the front with pram wheels and a wooden box to sit in. The pivot for the steering was a coach bolt (cup, square, round) and nut through a hole. I don't know why, but the hole had to be made with a hot poker despite the fact I had access to both hand and electric drills.

I suppose I was brought up to mend things because that's what we did. Dad could fit a new element to a Morphy Richards iron almost with his eyes shut and we even used to strip and lubricate noisy volume controls rather than fit a new one!

Things change! I suppose we were professional bodgers.

Geoff

[Peter Miller]

I was recently told this little story.

The rear fuel injector on a BMW packed up. IT seems that it had a straight six engine. They could not get it out without removing the engine, a £2000 operation.

There was no access throught the scuttle but someone (Not a BMW engineer) said why not cut a hole through above the injector so they did. Removed the faulty unit, fitted a new on and fitted a rubber hole plug in the hole which looks as it it was always meant to be there.

Poor original design, blindness to see the obvious answer and so vast sums for a simple job.

One more to the bodgers

Edited By Peter Miller on 22/01/2017 13:29:13

[kc]

My Golden Rule is " if it ain't broke don't fix it" but if it is broken try to fix it!

[alan p]

They say civilisation will end with a wimper not a bang (possibly due to the lack of bodging ability) also known as field modifications

[kc]

My understanding of bodgers comes from Woodworker magazine etc and the man at woodwork exhibitions who used to demonstrate bodging. It seems that bodging is working with green wood ( i.e just cut and not yet seasoned) which is much easier to turn on a foot powered 'pole' lathe whilst it is extremely green ( wet) Therefore the turned parts are left a little oversized to allow for shrinkage when they are left to season (dry) Later on the bodger uses a 'rounder' to make each joint the correct diameter and then fits the seasoned parts together. The 'correct' diameter of the dowel is tapered and slightly larger than the hole it fits into so it's a force fit and doesn't need glue. So the bodger is someone who uses judgement & experience rather than measurement, and green rather than seasoned timber. The bodger also uses coppiced rather than felled timber so it's green in the other sense too - doesn't destroy trees but allows them to regrow.

The rounder is a tool in effect like a large pencil sharpener - a blade at a slight angle which slices rather than chips the timber away.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Interesting KC.

One thing we can say with certainty - whatever the rest of our benighted society might believe to be the case, a bodger is in fact is an individual with a high level of skill and ingenuity - just like us in fact!

BEB

[J D 8]

Posted by Peter Miller on 22/01/2017 13:27:14:

I was recently told this little story.

The rear fuel injector on a BMW packed up. IT seems that it had a straight six engine. They could not get it out without removing the engine, a £2000 operation.

There was no access through the scuttle but someone (Not a BMW engineer) said why not cut a hole through above the injector so they did. Removed the faulty unit, fitted a new on and fitted a rubber hole plug in the hole which looks as it it was always meant to be there

I did a similar thing recently replacing an alternator on my daughters Ford KA MK1. Garage said lifting engine off its mounts and moving a bit to one side was the way to get enough space to remove it,quite a lot of work.

I cut out a bracket that just supports the bonnet closing plate to get access and welded it back in afterwards.

[kc]

Interesting that the people offering courses on bodging don't actually use the term bodger but Green Woodworking! An example here

How they can find people with enough money to spend on such a course amazes me. To spend that much money to learn the skills of probably the lowest paid trade (and now extinct industry ) in Britain is beyond belief! Presumably it will eventually lead to a Masters Degree in Bodging or something.

In my case I can claim that bodging (in the sense that BEB meant) must be in the genes. Somewhere I have my grandfathers first class bodges- example an old file drilled and tapped to make a die to cut various threads while the tang served as a handy tapered reamer, an old clock pendulum turned into a plumb bob, an AustinSeven valve spring compressor turned into a carpenters G clamp, worn out Whitworth spanners filed out to that new fangled AF size, etc etc,

[Don Fry]

KC, they do masters degrees in journalism. Now my dad beat lies out of me. Didn't take 4 years either.

[Colin Leighfield]

The weather on the Costa Blanca has been unbelievably foul with winds up to 100kph and driving rain, we have had no internet connection since we arrived, it's just come on as the weather improves.

Therefore I've fallen behind on the bodger debate but have realised that this could be my nemesis. On the basis that my level of bodging has always included a significant proportion of incompetence, I have finally realised that the true reason for any limited success that I have ever achieved is due to a capacity for fudging. I have to come to terms with not being a true bodger, but a fudger! Some fudgers will eventually achieve the status of bodger, but having been trying to bash balsa since 1956, I think I can give up all hope of that.

In trying to understand the status of a fudger In the eye of a bodger, perhaps it's like uncle with an amused gleam in his eye patting junior on the head and giving him a lump of sugar to keep him happy and know his place. I know my place, but will dedicate my life to fudging at the highest possible level. That will keep me happy!

[Peter Miller]

Long, long ago I realised my limitations and no longer even consider them.

Much of them can be summed up in one of my most common sayings "It will look OK at 50 feet"

So long as it will not fall to pieces in the air and everything works and it flies well I am happy. (and if one of my models happily survives 24.8 G they are strong enough)

The point is that I can achieve the highest standards, We had to when working on aircraft but it is a constant stress and I don't want or need stress these days.

 

Edited By Peter Miller on 23/01/2017 12:31:07

[Don Fry]

Or technically the 80/20 rule, most of the benefit for a small amount of the work. But try explaining such technicalities to SWMBO when your cleaning etc has been done to this ancient and honerable practice

[kc]

Bodging is a sort of Black Art where one uses some mechanical knowledge to see how it used to work and why it doesn't now and combines that with some Lateral Thinking to see which of the many probable cures are possible with available tools and materials. Then the bodger actually repairs the item and proves it by actually using the item again.

We might perhaps admit to our most successful bodges which actually got us out of trouble. Many of mine seem to depend on soft bendable wire and / or a Mole wrench. Examples-

My hire car in a remote part of Crete suddenly made a terrible screeching metal touching roadway sound just as I changed down to second gear on a hill. Examination proved that the gear linkage on this Yugo ( sort of rear engined Fiat replica) had broken beneath the lever and no longer connect to the rear mounted gearbox but dug into the ground. Amazingly right next to the car in the verge was a suitable length of fencing wire! Just a simple matter of pushing the wire under the car and twisting it in place so it supported the linkage clear of the ground. Didnt even have to crawl underneath or get my clothes dirty. The gearchange didnt work now but the car proved to be jammed in 2nd gear which was handy as it proved possible to start even on a hill with some careful clutchwork and yet still cruise at up to 40MPH all on the 850cc engine! Worked for a few days too by cannily choosing parking places where there was no need to use reverse.

After that I kept a length of soft wire in my own car just in case.

When the silencer fell off my Opel Kadett that piece of wire kept it away from the ground all the way along the A1 from Yorkshire to London whilst some canny and discrete driving avoided the attention of the law despite having no silencer at all.

The thin plastic throttle cable on my Wot4 failed one beautiful flying day so I was packing up to go home without flying when Jack the club 'character' goaded me into repairing it by saying " you must have something in your box or car that can bodge that" The same length of wire ( never throw anything away!) fixed the Wot4. Several years later when scrapping the oil soaked model I discovered the temporary bodge was still there after hundreds of flights.

My Vauxhall Viva HC had the clutch cable ( not hydraulic on Vivas) fail on a remote Suffolk road. After towing it home I discovered that the cable hadn't broken but the attachment point which held the outer cable had broken away meaning no actual force could be applied. When it failed again some years later I bodged it by clamping in place with a Mole wrench until another new pedal bracket was obtained. When it failed a third time the same trick worked for a time until a third new Vauxhall part was bought. This third new part had a reinforced area around the clutch cable so it seems their engineers do learn by their mistakes!

I have lost count of the numbers of rounded off or unusual size nuts that Mole wrench has removed but it's many, many. I have just realised the Mole is in the garage not in the car now - must put it back in my old Toyota just in case!

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

I love the way this brings out the philosopher in us!

Colin - never fear mate, you'll always be a bodger in my eyes!

(I bet you thought you's never read that!)

BEB