Patent Application
20060277812
The present invention relates to weapon accessories. More particularly, the present invention relates to devices and methods for protecting and shielding the barrel end of guns.
Many people own and use guns for various activities such as hunting, protection, skeet shooting, target practice, among others. Using a gun in the outdoors, particularly a rifle, opens the gun barrel to dust, moisture, dirt, and other foreign materials. Unwanted foreign materials and moisture can affect performance and safety. Before now, gun users have had to rely on tape for protection which is messy and unreliable. Thus, there is a need for a device that protects a gun barrel from dust and moisture without affecting accuracy or performance.
Presently known art attempts to address this problem, but has not completely solved the problem. The following represents a list of known related art:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,455,047 to Hoag teaches a “Scotch Tape” muzzle cover where the tape is cut into a generally disk shape, with adhesive either generally applied on one side, or applied in a ring fashion, and then taped to the muzzle.
The teachings of each of the above-listed citations (which does not itself incorporate essential material by reference) are herein incorporated by reference. None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singularly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.
The device to protect a gun barrel end of the present invention includes a washer portion having an adhesive side and a transparent cover portion attached to said washer portion. A muzzle cover provided with a removable slick for packaging and transport. A muzzle cover kit includes a removable slick, one or more muzzle covers removably adhered to said slick, a cleaning pad with a prepping agent, and container to house the kit.
The device to protect a gun barrel end of the present invention presents numerous advantages, including: (1) protecting the gun barrel from being compromised by unwanted foreign materials and moisture; (2) allows sighting down a barrel with the eye; (3) can be shot through without significantly affecting accuracy or, performance; (4) improvement over “Scotch tape” covers in that “Scotch tape” does not have resistance to ultraviolet and heat and cold as the transparent, not translucent polyester used in the present window; (5) improvement over “Scotch tape” in that a tape cover will wrinkle and stretch affecting opacity, where the present invention, having a foam ring with a transparent polyester window on the ring, allows stretching without affecting opacity and without wrinkling.
Additional advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. Further benefits and advantages of the embodiments of the invention will become apparent from consideration of the following detailed description given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the present invention.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated into and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate one or more embodiments of the present invention and, together with the detailed description, serve to explain the principles and implementations of the invention.
Before beginning a detailed description of the subject invention, mention of the following is in order. When appropriate, like reference materials and characters are used to designate identical, corresponding, or similar components in differing figure drawings. The figure drawings associated with this disclosure typically are not drawn with dimensional accuracy to scale, i.e., such drawings have been drafted with a focus on clarity of viewing and understanding rather than dimensional accuracy.
In the interest of clarity, not all of the routine features of the implementations described herein are shown and described. It will, of course, be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made in order to achieve the developer's specific goals, such as compliance with application- and business-related constraints, and that these specific goals will vary from one implementation to another and from one developer to another. Moreover, it will be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time-consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of engineering for those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of this disclosure.
As shown in
Elastic washer portion 12 is a circular washer shaped disk, having an inner ring edge with an inner diameter and an outer ring edge with an outer diameter. Elastic washer portion is made of dense weather resistant materials with elastic characteristics allowing the ring to stretch to different type muzzle configurations, 17 caliber to 50 caliber, without significantly affecting the surface tension of the clear transparent cover portion adhered to the washer portion. Elastic washer portion is also coated on both sides with a weather resistant adhesive. Suitable dense weather resistant materials with elastic characteristics, and coated with a weather resistant adhesive, are present in high density double-sided foam tape, as commonly known in the art, and can be purchased, among other places, from Radio Shack as Double-Sided Foam Tap, catalog number 64-2343. In the preferred embodiment, elastic washer portion has an outside diameter across the breadth of the washer, preferably 11/16 in. (17.4625 mm) to 1 in. (25.4 mm). Washer portion has an inside diameter preferably 5/16 in. (7.9375 mm) to ½ in. (12.7 mm). Washer portion is preferably 0.05 in. (1.27 mm) to 0.065 in. (1.651 mm) thick.
Clear transparent cover portion 14 is a clear transparent non-adhesive flexible polyester preferably 0.0381 mm (0.0015 in.) to 0.0762 mm (0.0030 in.) thick. Clear transparent cover portion 14 is adhered to one side of the washer portion 12. As shown in
Referring to
In operation in one embodiment, user peels removable slick 16 from adhesive side of washer portion 12, see
A muzzle cover kit is also provided including one or more muzzle covers 10 removably adhered to a removable slick 16 for transport, see
Those skilled in the art will recognize that numerous modifications and changes may be made to the preferred embodiment without departing from the scope of the claimed invention. It will, of course, be understood that modifications of the invention, in its various aspects, will be apparent to those skilled in the art, some being apparent only after study, others being matters of routine mechanical, chemical and electronic design. No single feature, function or property of the preferred embodiment is essential. Other embodiments are possible, their specific designs depending upon the particular application. As such, the scope of the invention should not be limited by the particular embodiments herein described but should be defined only by the appended claims and equivalents thereof.
