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January 06, 2014

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"The Rhinoceros," by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, calls the animal's horn "the bodger on the bounce."

In British English,bodgery might be obsolete but bodge isn't. A "bodge job" is used especially for incompetent general contractors who might be called "Bodgit and Scarper".

I understood (from a chair bodger) that bodging was a technical term for turning poles to make decorative chair-parts; and that it refers to using a bent pole (still attached to its roots) as a whipping device to pull a cord wrapped around a lathe to turn the chair parts (a "pole lathe".
I'm surprised no dictionary you consulted would mention this.
Mr Google knows about it.
Perhaps amateur bodgers were bad at it, hence: bodged or botched job.

"The bodger on the bonce" is the correct spelling. For some explanation of "bonce", which also refers to the song, see Michael Quinion's discussion at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bon2.htm

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