BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The inventive concept is directed to a protection device for floors when furniture is being moved. To prevent a floor from being damaged when a chair or table is moved, various sizes of felt disks or other soft material has been fastened to the bottom of the chair or table legs. The protective materials are usually attached to the bottom of the furniture legs by adhesives or mechanical fasteners.
Existing products are not as durable as desired and the adhesives used tend to lose their adhesion to ultimately causing the bond to fail. Mechanically connecting the leg covering to the bottom of the furniture legs is not satisfactory at all, because when the felt deteriorates, the remaining mechanical fastener contributes to a scraping on the floor.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,910,246 illustrates a furniture leg glide in the form of a cup which is slid over the leg It has an accordion-type section that will adjust itself to any slanting of a furniture leg.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,159,830 shows a leg slide protector in the form of a spirally wound tube that is inserted into a bore of the leg. This type of protection is quite cumbersome and expensive to manufacture.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,124,986 discloses a protective cover for use on the bottom of chairs and table legs. The disclosed device includes an elastomeric sleeve or cup having a bottom to which is connected a disk or soft dense material such as felt.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The protective device consists of a sock to be applied to a bottom of a furniture leg. The sock is made of an elastic material and made on a circular knitting machine. The inside surface of the sock has applied thereto a friction material to enhance the friction between the sock and the furniture leg. A top of the circular material is doubled back upon itself to form a double seam. The bottom of the sock is closed by an overcast seam and, ordinarily, does not require any additional material, such as felt, to act in its protective purpose, and that is, to protect a floor from being scratched or marred. However, there times and occasions when additional protection material may be useful such as a felt pad. Such a felt pad may be adhesively applied to a bottom of the sock or on the inside.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 shows just a flexible leg sock and how it can expand;
FIG. 2 illustrates a furniture leg and a sock prior to being placed on the leg;
FIG. 3 shows the sock in an expanded state;
FIG. 4 shows an interior of the sock with friction material placed therein.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
FIG. 1 illustrates the sock S prior to being placed on a furniture leg FL. It will explained in subsequent Figs. how the sock S can be expanded to fit corresponding sizes of furniture legs. The possible expanding is shown in phantom lines in FIG. 1.
FIG. 2 illustrates the furniture leg sock S by itself, wherein the sock S has an upper double thickness 2 by doubling back upon itself which is fastened to the sock S by way of a seam 2. At this point it may be explained how the sock is created. The sock S is made of knitted material. The yarns in the knitting process may consist of at least two different yarns such as elastic and/or non-elastic. The elastic yarns may be a spandex-type yarn. The knitting is accomplished by a narrow gauge knitting machine which initially will knit an endless tubular hose. Once the hose is knitted, it will be turned inside out and a friction material such as rubber knobs 4 (FIG. 4) will be applied to the surface of the turned out tube. This application of friction material can be done in a geometric pattern. After this procedure, the tube will be turned right side out again and an appropriate length will be cut and a double thickness 2 will then be formed by turning a short section of the cut tube inwardly and fasten the same by an appropriate seam 2. This procedure provides a finished top portion of the leg sock. The open bottom end of the tube will then be closed on a sewing machine by making an overcast seam 3. The sock is now ready for use on a leg of a piece of furniture. As was disclosed above in the discussion of the prior art, no further material disks, such as felt, needs to be applied to the bottom of the sock S because the overcast seam 3 provides enough of a cushion to protect the floor below from being marred or scratched. Practice has shown that this arrangement is very durable and very long lasting. However, under certain circumstances, it may be advisable to fasten a soft pad either to the inside bottom or an the exterior bottom of the tubular hose.
FIG. 3 shows the same reference characters being applied to this Fig. as well as to subsequent Figs. In this FIG. 3 there is shown the top of the sock S as it can be and should be expanded by arrow A prior to being slipped over a furniture leg. The parallel phantom lines in the sock illustrate the normal outline of the sock while the arrow A shows the possible expansion. Notice the bottom overcast seam 3.
FIG. 4 illustrates a broken open view of the inside of the sock. This view shows the friction material after having been applied to the inside surface of the sock. In this view there are shown rubber dots 4 which will provide for a friction against the furniture leg once the sock is applied to the leg. Any other type of friction material pattern, such as a geometric patterns may obviously be applied such as horizontal lines or open circles, etc. It should also be noted that when encountering spindly furniture legs and to accommodate those legs, it is simply a matter of running an ordinary seam along the length of the sock to narrow its circumference. Various diameter socks can be produced by using different diameter circular knitting machines so that the sock can be used in really large furniture legs with the same as advanced above.
Patent Application
20090032655
