Category:Strip-Work Construction Outfits

Toy Brands and Manufacturers

Strip-Work Construction Outfits

1910s -

1916: Hobbies Strip-Work [image info]

1916: Strip-Work Sundry Tools [image info]

1916: Strip-Worker's Cutting Table [image info]

1916: Strip-Work Set of Wheels and Gears for Travelling Gantry [image info]

Hobbies Ltd. produced the Strip-Work Construction Outfits and system in the 1910s.

The concept of Strip-Work was to create a new "genre" of hobbyist activity, for people who wanted to make models but weren't interested in full-scale carpentry.

Strip-work was also aimed at children, as an "educational" and "scientific" activity that could teach manual craft and woodworking skills in miniature, the packs containing small strips of wood and a small saw and tools sufficient to allow building model bridges, towers, and other scaffolding-style structures.

For more ambitious Strip-Workers, Hobbies had accessory kits including wheels, ready-made turned-wood parts such as railway buffers for users wanting to build the Strip-Work model railway designs, and a range of other more "Meccano-style" parts such as gears, that were shared with the Klipit construction system.

1916: Stripwork model barrows and trucks

Sets

Branding

Hobbies seem to have had some trouble deciding on the perfect name, and seem to have referred to the system as Strip-Work and Stripwork (and every other close variation thereof), and on the box packaging,Hobbies Strip Wood Working.

1913 promotional text:

It is essential that parents should take every opportunity to make their son's education as complete as possible. To attain this object it is necessary to adopt a method which will be attractive to the boy and at the same time train his faculties in accuracy, steadiness and industry.
With this end in view Stripwork has been introduced, and has met with an enthusiastic reception from the leading Educational Authorities, and as a hobby it forms a supplementary home training of no mean order. Note the illustration of the excellent Model of a Pile-Driver here shewn: it is a stripwork construction entirely.

— , Hobbies Ltd., , Hobbies Weekly, , 13th August 1913

1913
1913

1916 promotional text:

Strip-Work: The most instructive hobby for children

Strip-Work as a hobby and as a training method, without doubt has a very great future before it, and HOBBIES LIMITED have taken all the necessary steps to provide adequately for the demand which is bound to come for tools, outfits and materials.
The idea of Strip-Work, as its name implies, is the measuring, marking, cutting-off and joining together of narrow strips of prepared wood of different scantings and dimensions to form simple figures and models. This work is chiefly calculated to train the young in habits of accuracy, steadiness and industry, and there is no doubt that it is effecting this purpose wherever it is in use.
With the march of progress and the general speeding up of life, parents are becoming aware that every conceivable means must be used to give the children a more instructive training than in the past. As a result of this feeling, it will be noticed that the toys of the modern child are far more scientific and calculated to make the youngster think, than the toys that were mainly in existence a decade ago. Children are not now satisfied with toys that were then in existence, and it is the experience of those who have to do with children that they are always wanting to "make something" themselves. Nothing keeps them quieter at home than the placing in their hands of simple tools.
One great difficulty had to be surmounted, namely, the need for instructing the children doing the work. at school, the Manual Training Master naturally supplies all the necessary help, but in the home it is impossible for the parent to be constantly showing, explaining and helping the child. HOBBIES LIMITED have surmounted the difficulty by the provision of a large number of supplemental sheets, which show the child at a glance just how each model may be constructed and give the actual size of the sections required for each.
There is a large selection of these sheets, which may be obtained for 3d. each.

— , Hobbies Ltd., , Hobbies Catalogue, , 1916