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Traditional Firewood

Traditional Firewood

Watch Alan Waters give a fascinating and entertaining demo of traditional wood cutting in a Woodlands TV video. 

Under the slightly dodgy title of “Pimps, Faggots and Benders”  Alan gives a demonstration of cutting traditional firewood.  In case you’re wondering, a pimp is a bundle of kindling and a faggot a bundle of sticks.  He explains how they were traditionally used and how they are used today.  The bender is what he’s standing underneath, a temporary shelter in other words!

He also demonstrates making a thatching spar.  Watching a skilled woodsman splitting, or “cleaving” a 29 inch “gad” into slender spars without breaking them or letting the split run off in the wrong direction is impressive stuff.  Definitely worth a look …

See more demos and tips at http://www.woodlandstv.co.uk/


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Discussion

Has anyone heard of the term ‘kidder’ being used (in this instance in rural Lincolnshire in the mid-late 1800s) to describe the occupation of a woodsman who would chop woods into faggots? Doing family history research and this has come up in 2 census results for a man who later is described as a ‘woodsman’ . Could I have two different people (though everything else matches) or did terminology change? Curious. Thanks.

Elaine

17 October, 2021

Matt’s comment about “pimps” is incorrect. According to Edlin in his description of pimp making in “Woodland Crafts in Britain” (1949), “when 25 pimps are ready, they are bound into a large drum- shaped bundle….“.

Thus, the pimp is not the collection of 25 bundles, it is the single bundle.

Richard

24 May, 2018

His explanation in the video was in error, on his website, it is clear. A faggot is a specific volume of wood, typically about 3ft long and of a specific circumference. What he’s using in the video is ‘tops’, a brushwood faggot made from the thin top growth on shrubs (or pollarded/coppiced trees) that are one or two years old. As faggots, they’re far less uniform and unruly than larger ‘fuel’ wood and sticks, and so more tedious to determine their value. The solution was for the faggot to be chopped into segments of a uniform length, and collected into bundles of a uniform circumference, and bound. These are not ‘pimps’, they’re just bundles of kindling. A pimp is a collection of 25 bundles, which are tightly compressed and bound.

Matt McCarthy

29 July, 2017

A Bavin is bigger than a Pimp & was used mostly in ovens or kilns. Faggots & Bavins are also used ‘to fuel’ where as Pimps are used ‘to light’ fires.

Faggots also have other uses besides fuel.

Alan Sage

13 February, 2011

How does a pimp differ from a Bavin? Or are they the same thing?

Pete

7 January, 2011

We do not know the definitve meaning of the word pimp.One plausible theory is that ‘pimp’ is Welsh for five,and since 5×5=25,one pimp

Alan Waters

10 February, 2009

I love the title! I’ve come across a bundle of sticks being called a faggot, but never heard of a collection of kindling being referred to as a pimp before!

Mike

27 January, 2009