Patent Application
20180368595
None
N/A
This invention relates to glassware; and, more particularly, to a method for making jewel encrusted art ware for attachment to glassware, and particularly wine glasses.
Etched glassware has been known for a long time. The method of making such glassware is known in the art and is not discussed. Etched glassware includes decorative designs and can be expensive both to manufacture and purchase. More recently, it has become fashionable to attach decorative pieces to glassware as an alternative to etching. A common method of doing this is to take, for example, a brooch such as a jeweled brooch, remove the clip used to attach the brooch to an article of clothing, bend the brooch so its contour approximates the curvature of glass to which the brooch is to be attached, and then glue the brooch to the side of the glass.
Such a process is both time consuming and expensive. That is, assembler can only work with one piece of jewelry at a time, the piece may be damaged at any point during the removal of the clip and bending (so that the piece may have to be discarded); and unless the piece can be formed so its contour precisely matches that of the glass to which it is attached, the piece may not remain in place, have to be reattached, or either it or the glass may wind up broken.
It would therefore be advantageous t have a process that allowed decorative pieces, especially jeweled or jewelry pieces to be fabricated so their attachment to glassware was easy to do and the results long wearing.
The present disclosure is directed to a method of attaching decorative pieces to glassware; particularly to stemmed and stemless wineglasses as well as other types of glassware. The decorative pieces may be jeweled pieces and the pieces may be themed; that is, they may have a sports motif, a nautical motif, etc.
The method includes steps of cleaning the glasses and the decorative pieces, placing a plurality of glasses on a rack by which they are positioned so they can be subjected to a particular type of light, applying a particular resin to the back of each decorative piece, then placing each piece on the side of a glass and subsequently curing the resin for a predetermined period so that the resin hardens and secures the decorative piece to the side of the glass.
In a second embodiment of the invention, glasses are mounted on a rack and enclose a light bulb when installed. This configuration decreases curing time to permanently affix a decorative piece to glassware and increases throughput of the decorative glassware.
The method facilitates producing a significant number of decorated glasses at the same thereby reducing costs while providing a quality finished product. The method is therefore economical to use.
Other objects and features will be in part apparent and in part pointed out hereinafter.
The accompanying figures, together with detailed description which follows, form part of the specification and illustrate the various embodiments described in the specification.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views of the drawings.
The following detailed description illustrates the invention by way of example and not by way of limitation. This description clearly enables one skilled in the art to make and use the invention, and describes several embodiments, adaptations, variations, alternatives and uses of the invention, including what is presently believed to be the best mode of carrying out the invention. Additionally, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in its application to the details of construction and the arrangement of components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The invention is capable of other embodiments and of being practiced or carried out in various ways. Also, it will be understood that the phraseology and terminology used herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.
Referring to the drawings, a stemmed wineglass indicated generally W has a decorative jeweled piece J attached to the side of the glass at its upper end as shown in
To make the product, first, each glass W is cleaned and wiped with a cloth to remove any foreign material from the outer surface of the glass. This is done to insure that a decorative piece J properly adheres to the outside of the glass after it is attached to the glass.
Next, a plurality of wineglasses W is mounted on a rack R. The rack can hold, for example, up to twenty-four (24) wineglasses W. As shown in
Next, as shown in
As shown in
After all of the decorative pieces J are fitted onto the respective wineglasses, the fluorescent light bulb in fixture F is turned “on” for a predetermined period of time for light radiated from the bulb to cure the resin. This period is, for example, approximately five (5) minutes. Once the resin has cured, the decorative pieces J are permanently attached to the wineglasses. Further, the cured resin is optically clear meaning that if the wineglass is viewed from the back of the glass no distortion between the glass and decorative piece can be seen.
The wineglasses are now removed from rack R, cleaned, packaged, and sent to their purchaser.
Particular advantages of the method of the present invention are that a number of decorative pieces J can be simultaneously processed with the wineglasses to which they are fitted rather than processing one at a time. This increases throughput of the end product while saving time and labor costs. In addition, not all of the decorative pieces fitted to wineglasses and cured have to be of the same design. Rather, each decorative piece can be of a different design so batches including only, a few, or a large number of pieces can be processed at the same time so to further increase throughput while reducing production time and costs.
Referring to
While the above description has been for stemmed wineglasses, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the method can also be used with stemless wineglasses, glass swingtop bottles, pilsner glasses, high ball glasses and glass coffee mugs. Also, the method may be used with plastic drinking vessels
In view of the above, it will be seen that the several objects and advantages of the present disclosure have been achieved and other advantageous results have been obtained.
