Patent Application
20080264580
The present invention relates to a slat and method for producing a slat which is conservative of materials and natural resources, and which utilizes veneer to achieve the appearance of a single length of high-quality wood having radiused leading and trailing edges for an aesthetically pleasing look commonly desirable in slats used in louvered window coverings.
Slats may be utilized in a variety of louvered window coverings, including Venetian blinds and vertical blinds. To conserve both materials and natural resources, natural wood slats may be constructed of a wood which may be both plentiful and inexpensive. Often, however, less expensive and readily available types of wood may be soft, may not easily accept stain, or may stain or sand unevenly.
Consequently, it may be desirable to apply a veneer to a slat to create an aesthetically pleasing appearance. Where a veneer has a brittle quality, such as genuine wood veneer made from a thin layer of potentially expensive, high-quality wood superior to that from which the slat is constructed, a square-edged slat may cause breakage of the veneer as it is being applied around any of the 4 corners of the slat. Breakage of veneer results in waste, which may be quite costly, especially in quantity.
Slats with radiused leading and trailing edges are a popular option in blind sets because of their more modern appeal. However, slats made from the less expensive woods described above may sand unevenly where the wood is soft, or may splinter or crumble upon sanding if the wood is friable. This may result in wasting expensive materials, and may also be problematic where a stained-wood slat is desired as staining may not camouflage unattractive wood or uneven texture that may result from sanding. Although veneering with materials other than wood is an option, thin veneers, such as paper veneers, are likely to cleave to any sanding defects to produce an unattractive dimpled surface in the finished product. Moreover, veneers that simulate a wood grain are usually easily detectable as such and are thus poor substitutes for genuine wood slats.
To conserve valuable resources, natural wood slats may be formed by piecing together short lengths of scrap wood. This technique may be advantageous for avoiding waste or decreasing the possibility of warping. Sanding pieced-together slats to round the leading and trailing edges, however, is generally not practicable because each segment will usually differ from its neighboring segment in grade, grain, or hardness. Staining the slats is also not likely to be a viable option because stain is usually not adequately opaque to hide the joints or the differing grades and grains of wood. In addition to being obvious, thin veneers, such as paper, may also be ineffective where sanding defects are present because of the potential dimpling effect described above.
Finally, slats may be constructed of manmade materials in either single or pieced lengths. Where the material from which the slats are constructed is not aesthetically pleasing, or where a user desires a particular high-end look, such as a wood look, without the associated high costs, few options may be available. A user may paint the slats to achieve a faux-wood finish, for example, but this option is generally costly, time consuming, and may yield fake-looking results at best. Genuine wood veneer may be applied to achieve a wood look, but where the slat is square-edged, similar problems as those discussed above may result. Where a square-edged slat is constructed of any material which is not conducive to sanding, rounded leading and trailing edges may not be easily achievable.
What is needed is a slat and method which conserves costly materials by enabling a high-quality veneer to be easily and economically applied to an inexpensive underlayment to achieve smoothly radiused leading and trailing edges for an aesthetically pleasing look commonly desirable in louvered blinds.
The structures and process for producing the slat of the present invention enable easy and economical application of an aesthetically pleasing, high-end, high quality veneer to a support structure which may be a single length of wood scrap or other low-cost material, or which may be pieced together from a plurality of short lengths of wood scrap or low-cost material. Because the support structure is optimally constructed either from readily available and/or inexpensive materials such as recovered scrap, and because the potentially costly, high-grade veneer is applied sparingly to cover the support structure, the invention is helpful in conserving natural resources.
The support structure may be sandwiched between two layers of high-grade veneer which may then be glued to the support structure using any commonly acceptable adhesive. The resulting partially veneered support structure may then be sliced by cutting through both sheets of veneer and through the support structure to form partially veneered individual slats for which the existing veneer will become the leading and trailing edges. The leading and trailing edges on each slat may then be radiused by sanding or by using any other equally effective method. The slat may be further veneered to fully enclose the support structure either before or after sanding.
Where the slats are completely veneered prior to sanding, the additional layers of veneer applied to each slat should optimally be of a length which minimizes waste during sanding. Completely veneering each slat prior to sanding, however, may result in a smoother and less visible transition between the four pieces of veneer and may require less overall sanding effort to finish. A clear and appropriate surface varnish, preferably of ultraviolet-resistant material, may be applied to the veneered slat for protection and for creating a finished look.
The invention, its configuration, construction, and operation will be best further described in the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
The description and operation of the slat of the present invention will begin to be best described with reference to
Note that while
It should be noted that the veneer sheets 61 and 63 are shown as overlapping the veneer strips 49 and 53, but this need not be the case. Including the case where the veneer sheets 61 and 63 are applied first, the veneer strips 49 and 53 can be attached secondly, with blended finishing to be achieved by sanding and the like.
Note that
Although the invention has been derived with reference to particular illustrative embodiments thereof, many changes and modifications of the invention may become apparent to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Therefore, included within the patent warranted hereon are all such changes and modifications as may reasonably and properly be included within the scope of this contribution to the art.
