Not everyone can make beautiful hand-crafted wooden things. Colin Rogers certainly can. In fact, he’s on a mission to revive a dying craft.
Colin, known better by friends as Buck Rogers, might be 82, but he sure is living life largely. From the comfort of his home in Waterfall Gardens Retirement Village, he spends his days not just hand-crafting model cars out of wood but creating art with origins tracing back to the early days when toys were typically handcrafted from natural materials like wood, bone and stone, reflecting the craftsmanship of their time.
A retired professor of organic chemistry at the University of Durban Westville, Colin’s interest in woodwork was ignited during a year spent in the UK in 1972, reconnecting with his high school girlfriend, Margot, who he later returned to SA with and married.
“The building I was living in at the time was going to be demolished, so I bought a van from a friend and some tools, cut up the kitchen furniture and turned the van into a camper.”
Prior to this, he’d never even picked up a hammer.
“What can I say? The bug bit and ever since then I’ve enjoyed woodwork and working with my hands,” says Colin, who earned the name Buck Rogers when his Latin master caught him reading a cowboy book in Form 3 (Grade 10).
Next to peak Colin’s woodwork interest was a rocking horse.
“My daughters inherited one in the early 80s, and at their birthday parties all their friends wanted to do was ride on their rocking horse. So, I decided to try my hand at making them to sell.”
Colin did some homework and, while on sabbatical, visited a rocking horse factory in Kent, England, that manufactured horses for princes William and Harry, and supplied Harrods, before setting about to make his first one, which was bought by a Swiss businessman who did not think much of Colin’s artistic abilities.
“While my craftsmanship and woodwork skills were good, my painting skills were not. I enlisted the help of an art teacher friend, Sharon Palm, who would take care of that side of things. Another difficult part of making the rocking horses was finding accessories.
“I eventually found a taxidermist in Queensburgh who showed me how to make the eyes out of Perspex and learned how to do the leather work and stitch the leather,” says Colin.
The actual horse and head constructions are carved out of pine, while the legs and base are made of meranti. Colin uses real horsehair, which he gets from a crocodile farm, for the tails and manes. He uses a Victorian safety rocking mechanism, rather than the usual curved rocker, and each creation is dated in a unique manner. Colin would put the day’s newspaper, and some coins, into the body before sealing each rocking horse.
“When I exhibited the first one at a church fair, people loved it, many reflected on a childhood that featured a rocking horse similar to the one I’d made. It would seem that this craftsmanship has slowly died over time, but I’d be interested to find out just how many people have old rocking horses lying around in their attics or garages, with no idea they could be of value,” says Colin, highlighting that although they were expensive to make, at the time, they would fetch anything equivalent to R10 000 to R15 000 in London’s Harrods. They certainly were built to last.
Over the years, and in between leaving the UK for a life in South Africa, Colin experimented with three different size rocking horses. He says if he had to count he probably made about 20 large, 10 medium and two of the smallest size, as most buyers wanted to invest in rocking horses that could be enjoyed as toys – and ridden – and not just as décor items or collectibles, which those that remain in his presence have become.
Colin has now traded the challenge of studying the anatomy of a horse with perfecting the construction of making model cars out of wood.
“For a while I put my woodworking skills to rest while my wife and I focussed on work and raising a family. In our later years, retired from our busy careers, we packed up our family home, with its three-car garage in Durban, to move into our cosy nest egg in Waterfall where a single garage became my workshop.”
Colin, has six grandchildren – four in the UK and two in Kloof – and has just finished making a guinea pig hotel for the latter.
“When Covid forced us into lockdown, I started carving wooden replicas of some of the cars – mostly from the 1940s – that I fancied.” His first vehicle creation was a 1931 Buick Sedan, then a Chevrolet Coupé, followed by a 1932 V12 Cadillac Sedan, then a 1931 Cadillac Roadster and a 1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster.
“I’d make a two-page drawing of the car, which gives me a 1/12 scale, and I’d work off that. It can take several months to make one, but I do it at my leisure. It also became a coping mechanism for me when my wife, who’d been diagnosed with cancer, was undergoing chemotherapy and later died. I’d venture into a peaceful place, with mostly 60s music playing in the background, and pour my energy into sports cars and a 1914 Model T Ford as these filled an emptiness and gave me purpose,” says Colin, who has made about 25 wooden cars, scrounging wood from wherever he can, since 2020.
Apart from two UK commissions, he’s not trying to sell his creations as they are purely made for the love of it and to keep busy while retaining a dying craft.
“I have many people popping in to see how my cars are progressing, and they always say the current one is the best I have made!”
As a nature lover with a life-long interest in collecting interesting rock and fossil samples, of which he has a modest collection, Colin dedicates any spare time he has to breeding butterflies in the village –African monarch to be specific – and feeding two crested hornbills, a pair of woolly-necked storks, a beautiful grey heron, a hadeda with a gammy leg and his favourite, a yellow-billed kite named Jasper.
“I’ve fed him for the last six years, and what is amazing is that I can tell almost to the day, in the second week of August, when he will arrive back from his northerly migration. On good days, when I’m working on my cars outside in the sunshine, the birds all hover in the tree just outside my front door. I think there’s a little heavenly peace in that.”
Details: You can contact Colin on 079 129 3106.
