Ajet

[Graham TitmanParticipant @grahamtitman81812]

After clearing my late uncles house out i came across one or two of my old toys Bako was quite popular and Meccano but i can only find very little of the above did any body else have it.i thinck around 1958 or9 ?

[Graham TitmanParticipant @grahamtitman81812]

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

BAKO – was that the plastic bricks construction toy which slid along metal rods. I had a 'kit' which was sufficient to build a house about 4" x 6".

[steamdaveParticipant @steamdave]

And then there was MiniBrix – rubber blocks that clipped together somewhat like Lego.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

Meccano was my first love from age 4 until stick and tissue models were discovered age 11 but AJET is a new one on me

I remember BAKO on the rods but what was the house building set that actually used miniature bricks and mortar?

I'm afraid Keil Kraft was my downfall!

Tug

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

Ha! The power of Google – 'BRICKPLAYER' –

I never had the desire for one but had a schoolmate who did. Quite a messy thing as I remember.

Tug

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

I had Brickplayer. The special 'cement' quickly ran out so I used real cement so then it couldn't be taken apart by soaking as per advert.

The wire rods used in Bako were made a special non standard diameter so that people couldn't buy ordinary SWG wire to replace them. We sometimes have someone displaying large buildings in Bako at the St Albans club show (last weekend in September).

[BazParticipant @baz89810]

I had Bako around about 1959, a grey base peppered with about 2mm dia holes that rods of various lengths were inserted in and then blocks about 20mm square were slid into place between the rods. Lot of my rods got bent putting them in and taking them out, I must have been a bit ham fisted as a child, old age hasn’t seen me get @ny better.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I think (from some 60 years of memory) that it was BAYKO, not BAKO, printed on the set I had, but I may be wrong.

The wires stood vertically in holes in a plastic base, then all the brickwork panels, doors and windows were inserted between them, keyed by semicircular grooves down their sides. Finally, before fitting the roof, perforated steel ties resembling miniature "Meccano" strips were added to hold all the wires' upper ends in correct pitch.

'

I don't know its name but if I dredge deeply enough the mental swarf-bin that is my memory (" So that's where that went…! " ) I recall a construction set our Infants' School classroom had, consisting of square-section plastic rods that could be joined by perforated discs to create what would now be called "wireframe" representations of, errr, things.

'

I think it was on Ellie Taylor's Safe Space, on Radio Four yesterday evening, that I heard the wry comment that once upon a time if you bought Lego you bought a box of bricks from which to build anything (within its range); but now it is a kit for a single model, to discourage children from using their imaginations. Goodness knows what the "Chief Concept Officer" and suchlike clowns responsible for such kit design decisions, would make of children scratch-building full-size things…

….. As in my treasured copy of The Junior Weekend Book; given me when I was six or seven. Published in the mid-1950s ("now that sugar has come off ration" it says in introducing its toffee recipes that assume any normal child under ten can safely boil treacle and butter solutions on the gas-stove ), it contains instructions for making, from scratch:.

– A simple tent. Fair enough. Not quite Glencoe Winter standards but fine on your lawn in Summer.

– A scow. What? Of course you have sufficient marking-out skills and don't need ask Dad nicely if he can cut the wood for you with his Very Sharp cross-cut and rip saws.

– A slightly more advanced boat – it has a sharp end. Dad's busily re-sharpening his saws and pencils for you….

I don't recall it saying anything about making the joints water-tight on either boat, but they'll plim up once you've sunk a couple of times playing Swallows and Amazons on the local duck-pond or reservoir. Anyway, I think another chapter contains swimming-lessons.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, never heard of Ajet, but as for building bricks, we had Betta Bilda from Airfix, which I always thought was more realistic to buildings in real life, than Lego was, but the bricks fitted together in much the same way. It was much cheaper than Lego at the time, but it took longer to build something the same size as a Lego one.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 31/03/2023 08:01:44

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Posted by steamdave on 25/07/2022 11:57:36:

And then there was MiniBrix – rubber blocks that clipped together somewhat like Lego.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

If I recall correctly once the kit was a few years old the rubber lost a bit of resiliency and the bucks didn't go together that well. Breathing on the projections immediately before pushing together restored easy mating.

Much more realistic and generally nicer to handle than Lego, which always seemed very crude to me. My inherited kit had superb windows and roof parts along with a quite thick instruction book with lots of examples of houses you could make.

Passed on to mothers sisters grandchildren who wantonly destroyed and dispersed it, along with the monster Meccano box.

As Nigel says its almost scary to contemplate what would happen if modern kids tried to do the sort of things that were routinely published as thing for teh clever boy or girl to do in pre-war and post-war "I'm on holiday and bored" things to do books. My generation and I sometimes have a minor start before realising "Yes we could do that.".

Clive

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

As aspiring young architects, living in Birmingham … we enjoyed this system: **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets

.

You might be comforted to know that my brother and I both followed other career paths

MichaelG.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 30/03/2023 23:29:04:

I don't know its name but if I dredge deeply enough the mental swarf-bin that is my memory (" So that's where that went…! " ) I recall a construction set our Infants' School classroom had, consisting of square-section plastic rods that could be joined by perforated discs to create what would now be called "wireframe" representations of, errr, things.

Knex. We had a very small amount but it seems to have a user group still. It seems to have been 'upgraded' to a slightly more complex rod profile but the overall concept is the same. i seem to recall some connectors had a larger central hole so the rod could rotate and make it a wheel.

 

Edited By Bazyle on 31/03/2023 09:51:36

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

As a kid I knew the son of the builder who put up our house. He completely dissed Bayko sets with their vertical wires and slide-on wall sections – it was nothing like the way you built *real* houses, he said.

I suspect his dad was quite a traditional builder with a low opinion of the prefabricated techniques used by some sections of the trade.

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

Yes Nigel, it was The BAYKO building set. You forgot the square perforated corner plates which like the strips rusted thanks to the minimum tin plating. Base plates on mine were green and were joined together with heavy duty link plates and part of the 'Kit' was a pair of jewellers pliers to get the wires back out of the bases on 'striipdown.

Regards Ian.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Clive Foster on 31/03/2023 08:32:12:

Posted by steamdave on 25/07/2022 11:57:36:…

…

As Nigel says its almost scary to contemplate what would happen if modern kids tried to do the sort of things that were routinely published as thing for teh clever boy or girl to do in pre-war and post-war "I'm on holiday and bored" things to do books. My generation and I sometimes have a minor start before realising "Yes we could do that.".

…

Old men have always been convinced modern youth have gone to the dogs. And young people have always had a good laugh at out-of-touch ancients who can't be trusted to come back from the shops with what they were sent to buy yet are certain they know how to run the country.

I'm currently reading AG Macdonell's "The Shakespeare Murders". Published in 1933 and the book has fun at the expense of foolish youth and a Victorian aunt, "dressed entirely in black and draped in Jet ornaments". Victorians and young adults coexisted in 1933, now both their worlds are dead and gone.

Children enjoy toys that fit their experience, not mine! Meccano dates to a time when steel frame structures were common – truss bridges, cranes, vehicles built on chassis, and almost all technology was mechanical. Meccano's appeal to children faded with advent of wireless, streamlining, electricity, white goods, electronics, television, computers and the internet.

Today's kids are less likely to be bored on holiday too. I was, mine weren't! They still play on railway lines though, and boys always want to own air-guns (unless an assault rifle is available).

Be fun to watch Nigel, Clive and I skateboarding, competing in a virtual reality RPG, sharing our knowledge of music with teenagers, and then going back a couple of generations to stop a runaway horse with a hoop… Point is, what we learn in our youth has a shelf-life, and the world changes continuously. Living in the past is always a mistake – because most of it disappears.

Nothing new in this. As Shakespeare put it in 1599:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Pensioners can afford to indulge old habits. Youth have to embrace change and make the best they can of it. Otherwise, there is no progress.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 31/03/2023 09:59:13

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Bazyle – Aha! So that was Knex! I knew the name but did not connect it to the kits I saw.

''''

Circlip – thank you. I had forgotten some of the details but do now recall the corner-plates. These components had to be very thin, of course, so the roof would fit the walls properly. My set may have been one of the more basic ones but we did not extend it (if extra parts were available), and I did not have an extra baseplate and its joiners.

''''''

You are right of course, Dave; and as you quote from Shakespeare shows, 'twas ever thus.

Even the Classical Greek philosophers wittered about today's yoof of their day.

Electronics was a large hobby among adults, buyjng components often from shops in their own towns and building to designs published in magazines like Radio Constructor; equivalent to ME and MEW; some to their own designs. This though seems to have faded away, although model-engineering has brought it back to the extent of building CNC machine electronics.

 

And we all know Dad or Uncle trying to dance to the latest hits whatever they may be, at some family do like a wedding reception, is not advisable….

====

Playing on railways…. Sometimes fatally.

Recently a 15yo girl was found dead, from electrocution, on the 3rd-rail electrified main line near her home. This was fairly local to me too, near Weymouth.

She must have been trespassing away from a safe level-crossing or other public-access area, into an area where the conductor rail tops are exposed, along the space between the Up and Down lines; and to her death. Why she was there, has yet to be determined and must not be speculated beyond doubting "playing", not at her age.

A terrible tragedy…

Such incidents, by accident, misadventure or suicide, cause some disruption so the emergency-services can attend safely; but I have never understood why the Police need take so long after the safe recovery of the body, "investigating"… what? The cause of death is usually very unpleasantly obvious, the point of entry to the railway land may or may not be obvious; but why so long extra closure of services?

 

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 31/03/2023 11:16:56

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Nigel,

I seem to recall that this closing of roads for investigations started with a Chief Constable of Wales who decreed that all road accidents were crime scenes and needed investigation. This was the same CC who started the system of prosecuting drivers who strayed over the speed limit by 1mph. Today, the Police don't seem to care about the disruption caused by these wholesale closures.

Peter G. Shaw

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, one type of construction kit I had in about 1962, which you could use a good deal of your own imagination with, consisted of plastic tube type pieces, with a hole in one end and a peg on the other end. There were also five through holes along the tube and five pegs along each side, the pegs would snap into the holes. These were in colours of red, blue, green, yellow, black and white and were about 30 to 40mm long, and one thing I learned about them is if you connected black and yellow ones alternatively end to end, it was how striking and stood out very well as opposed to black and white ones did, and when in later years in my day jobs, black and yellow tape which was often used to segregate a hazardous area off, reminded me of them. The awful sketch of mine below is what they looked like, but I can't remember the name of them, but worst of all, I lost them somehow on my way home from school, and someone else must have found them because they were nowhere to be seen when I went back to look for them.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 31/03/2023 11:39:52

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

The sad aspect of the demise of these various construction kits is that unlike us youngsters tend to lack the stimulus to use their imaginatiions, and innovate.

Such "toys" taught us lots of things, gear / pulley ratios, how to make a girder inflexible, multiple purchase lifting systems, the power of screw threads. I could go on and on.

Hence the lack of practical skills among so many younger folk, unless a keyboard is involved.

Howard..

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

I had a Bako, (various spellings have been suggested, I don't know which is right) I also had a chemistry set. Not many of the chemicals tasted very nice, but I don't think they did me any harm. Saying that, it would explain a lot about my physical and mental condition. I also discovered that mercury could be bought from the chemist. It felt wierd swirling a ball of mercury around in your hand. I used the mercury as part of electronics experiments.

P.S Don't ask me about cannons and bombs made with a certain garden substance and sugar, I know nothing.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by lee webster on 31/03/2023 15:33:51:

P.S Don't ask me about cannons and bombs made with a certain garden substance and sugar, I know nothing.

How about the explosive made from iodine crystals and (censored). Extremely sensitive when dry. Used to be put under the lifting flap of school desks.

Russell

[Engine BuilderParticipant @enginebuilder]

I remember most of the construction sets mentioned here. if you ever get the chance visit The Museum of Childhood, part of the V and A in Bethnal Green London. All these are on display there.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

The spelling:

" In 1960 Meccano Ltd purchased Bayko, a Bakelite building model construction toy, from Plimpton Engineering in Liverpool,… " and

" Bayko was a British building model construction toy invented by Charles Plimpton, an early plastics engineer and entrepreneur in Liverpool. "

" Over its lifespan [patent year 1933 to 1967], both Plimpton and Meccano Bayko was exported across the world, and, besides being a toy, it attracted a modest adult following that still exists today. A healthy trade in original Bayko sets and parts also exists today, with some enthusiasts even casting their own Bayko pieces.^"

Copied from Wikipedia.

…

I think as adults and children alike we have been bombarded for some decades with the idea that no-one needs make anything, no-one needs practical skills – just buy-use-discard-buy-new, just tap away on keys.

You hear older people talk of youngsters being "tech-savvy".

I don't doubt some are, but I think too often this lazy, sloppy slang just means being able to look up bus times, crib homework and footle around on Facebook. No cleverer than being able to use a modern TV with a remote-controller, for which you don't need know even basic radio principles.

'

(On the other hand. I cannot drive a TV, "smart"-'phone or games-console at all….. but I can use 'Word' and 'Excel' moderately well, could once make very simple 'Access' databases, and now use enough 'TurboCAD' to make drawings I can express as physical metalwork!)

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

I had some Bilofix when I was too young for Meccano

Martin C

[Author]

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