Not Applicable
Not Applicable
Current U.S. Class: 2/371; 172/22; 172/41; 172/532; 175/385
Current International Class: 1B 1/00 (20060101); A01B 1/06 (20060101); A01C 00 (20060101); A01C 5/04 (20060101); A01B 001/00
Field of Search: 172/19,21,22,25,41,111,418,532,371; 175/385,394; 111/106
“The present invention relates to hand held and operated gardening tools, more specifically to improve and expand the scope and function of the simple hand tool addressing the issues of ease of use, reduction of labor intensive planting, and the ability to make ready the tilled or unfilled ground for planting of seeds, starter plants or bulbs with or without use ground covers or weed barriers.”
Hand gardening tools such as shovels, rakes, bulb planters, tillers and the like have been used in some form for as long as man started to plant his food. As with all man made things these tools are constantly being improved on or new inventions made to deal with the rising needs of the gardener or farming industry.
Generally, hand gardening tools are made with a handle, a shaft, and either a set of tongs, spade, forks, or blade of circular shape designed to work the soil and make the ground ready for the planting.
Typically these garden hand tools work fairly well but have several drawbacks that lead to excessive bending and crouching close to the ground. These drawbacks result in a myriad of problems from back aches to tendonitis, arthritis and blisters on knees and hands depending on the time spent operating said tools.
To address these issues inventors and developers started to make specialty tools for making planting easier and faster such as the garden tool for planting flower bulbs and ornamentals, U.S. Pat. No. 6,352,122 of LOVE, which utilizes an elongated shaft with a boring bit with a pair of fins to make and widen the planting hole while breaking up the soil, the operating end being driven by a drill. Though this device does the job it will not cut through ground cover and puts a lot of stress on the operator, while requiring a power cord or battery operated drill needing charging.
A similar planting tool is the semi automatic garden planter, U.S. Pat. No. 6,662,879 of Costa, which utilizes an elongated shaft with a foot operated plunger by means of a foot rest used to thrust the plunger into the soil and a second plunger and a set of plunger plates that are settable for the depth of the hole. This device uses a spring loaded mechanism to hold and release the soil during operation. Again the device does the job however it to does not permit cutting ground cover due to the serrated cutting tip and requires the operator to do multiple function operations in order to make a hole in the ground. It is believed that the closest of the prior art references to instant invention is this patent to Costa U.S. Pat. No. 6,662,879
A different approach to garden planting is the multipurpose gardening tool U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,379 of Timmons, which uses a double edged scoop base that is v shaped, one end of said scoop is adapted to dig into, scoop up and remove soil or other material while the other end of said scoop has a sharp jagged edge for cutting into roots and such. This gardening tool requires digging and cutting or soil and roots and though it may give plantability it does not allow for precision hole planting or clean cutting of ground covers.
A close cousin to the instant invention would be the Gardening tool with plug ejector and detachable cutting chamber U.S. Pat. No. 4,585,072 of Martinez. This approach shows a central shaft type ejector and cutter plug puller and is designed to pull weeds but would not be able to cut ground cover in its current design.
A further search of the prior art has uncovered the following patents: Price, U.S. Pat. No. 4,986,588; Deane, U.S. Pat. No. 1,692,436; Rose, U.S. Pat. No. 2,531,297; Hus, U.S. Pat. No. 6,349,776; Ballmann, U.S. Pat. No. 3,444,938; Glynn, U.S. Pat. No. 3,210,112; Ober, U.S. Pat. No. 1,783,026; List, U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,339; Hoffman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,638; and Gottfried, U.S. Pat. No. 3,273,930.
No single reference cited above and found during my search discloses all of the features of the instant invention, although some of these prior art references do disclose some, but not all, of the elements of the instant invention.
Accordingly, the reader will see in
Being designed to address the gardeners and landscapers needs that have been discussed with the prior art, several additional objects and advantages of the present invention are:
These and further objects, features and advantages of the invention shall become apparent from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment thereof when taken in conjunction with the drawings, wherein like reference characters refer to corresponding parts in the several views.
The present invention will be better understood from the following detailed description as depicted in the several views of drawings in which like referenced numerals refer to like parts;
The broken lines shown in
The following description is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the invention and sets forth the best modes contemplated by the inventor for those so skilled to do so.
Also shown in
The large diameter cutter head 32, is made of a larger size tubing than the cutter tube 14, and is permanently affixed by well known means to a large diameter cutter head mount 32A, the inside diameter of said mount is snugly fit over the outside diameter of the cutter tube 14, while the attachment mounting holes 30, are aligned and fastened by means of the attachment wing bolts 40, of which there are three spaced at 120 degrees around the perimeter of the mating surfaces.