The Casting Specialties Division of C. F. Struck Corporation, Cedarburg Wisconsin, also known as Casting Specialties Corp., manufactured and sold (through direct sales) a power hack saw machine kit, a drill press kit, and a bench grinder kit. These kits were aimed primarily at high school shops but were also sold to home hobbyists. Former industrial arts schoolteacher Clarence F. Struck established both Casting Specialties and its parent company.

The kits included iron castings, some of which were already partially machines. The buyer would perform the final machining and assembly. For the hack saw kit, only a drill press was needed to complete the machining of the components. For the drill press kit, a 13-inch lathe and a large drill press were required.

C. F. Struck Corp., now shortened to the Struck Corp., is still in business, making small bulldozers and other small vehicles, in both kit and complete form.

Information Sources

• Advertisements for the Power Hack Saw kit appear to range from the 1950s to 1980s, in School Shop, Popular Science, Workbench and other magazines. The earliest we have found was in the April 1950 School Shop (see the "Images" tab, above).
• The January 1968 issue of Popular Science page 160 contains an article on finishing the power hacksaw kit and has some suggestions for upgrading the project.
• A YouTube video on Casting Specialties from prolific YouTube creator mrpete222 reviews the products from this maker and discusses how he was inspired to create Peterson Products to make additional school project kits similar to those from Casting Specialties. The Peterson Product kits were quite a bit less expensive because rather than providing iron castings they provided a pattern for casting the parts, which schools would usually do out of aluminum.