Supports: racks – Special article – Receptacle support
Reexamination Certificate
2002-10-09
2004-07-20
Gibson, Jr., Robert W. (Department: 3634)
Supports: racks
Special article
Receptacle support
C211S087010
Reexamination Certificate
active
06763956
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a novel wine rack, to installations comprising it, to a kit containing the elements thereof adapted for onsite assembly thereof and to a method for the fabrication of its essential elements offsite and the onsite assembly thereof.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A wine cabinet which employs a plurality of rods mounted thereon perpendicularly at one end thereof and parallel to each other in a plurality of rows on a face of a vertical flat support member, at intervals such that x+1 adjacent rods in the same row will support x number of wine bottles, is known in the prior art. See U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,129. A wine rack in which the body of the wine bottles is supported by a pair of support pegs and the neck thereof is positioned in a hole in an upright panel is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,382,065. A wine rack which is large enough to cover most or all of the surface of a wall of a room and adapted to be mounted vertically on or against the wall, which consists essentially of a rigid flat support member which has a plurality of rods projecting perpendicularly in parallel rows from a face thereof at uniformly spaced intervals and on which wine bottles stored thereon are supported solely by two adjacent rods in the same row, with each of the two rods, except the rod at each end of a row, also providing support for an adjacent wine bottle stored in the same row without their side touching, is novel.
An open faced wine rack which is aesthetically pleasing when empty, partially filled or completely filled with wine bottles and which can be assembled onsite by unskilled labor from offsite fabricated elements without special tools and without creating quality control problems is novel. The prior art approach generally is a cabinet with doors, usually with locks, when a relatively few number of wine bottles are to be stored, e.g., in the order of a hundred or less. The cost per bottle capacity of such cabinets makes storage of a large number of wine bottles, e.g., in the order of several hundred or thousand, is very high. Thus, when a large number of bottles are to be stored, on site fabricated wood shelving on which the wine bottles rest and which maintain the bottles in a stable position and configuration is the conventional approach. The former are limited in the amount of bottles which can be stored therein and the latter, although functionally adequate, are intended for a storage area such as a wine cellar and are not designed to be aesthetically pleasing. The prior art also lacks a method of fabricating offsite and assembled onsite a wine rack whose size presents transportation and/or installation issues when it is both fabricated and assembled offsite and labor costs and quality control when it is both fabricated and assembled onsite. There also is lacking in the prior art a kit containing the structural elements of a wine rack which can be fabricated accurately, economically and rapidly offsite, which can easily be transported to an installation site and which can be accurately, economically and rapidly assembled onsite into a wine rack and installed thereat by unskilled labor without onsite fabrication of a structural element thereof
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of this invention to provide a wine rack on which a plurality of wine bottles of a standard volume which have slightly varying diameters can be compactly stored without their sidewalls touching. It is another object to provide a wine rack which is aesthetically pleasing, both when empty and when partially or completely filled with bottles stored thereon. It is another object to provide the structural elements of a wine rack which can be readily, economically and expeditiously fabricated offsite and which can be assembled inexpensively and rapidly onsite and, in its preferred embodiments manually without tools by unskilled individuals. It is a further object to provide a conveniently transportable kit comprising the unassembled but completely fabricated structural elements of a wine rack which can rapidly, accurately and economically be assembled onsite. Another object is to provide an economical method-of rapidly and economically fabricating offsite the critical structural elements of a wine rack. Other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art to which this invention pertains.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In a first article of manufacture aspect, this invention relates to an open faced wine rack for storing horizontally thereon a plurality of wine bottles of the same or substantially the same sidewall diameters, which wine rack has, as its structural elements,
(a) as the sole vertical support collectively for wine bottles stored on the wine rack, a planar rigid monolithic quadrilateral vertical support member which has parallel first and second faces; and which has mounted against at least the first face thereof,
(b) as the sole horizontal support individually for wine bottles stored on the wine rack, a plurality of identical straight rigid round metal wine bottle support rods, a first end of each of which is threaded and has a face which is perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the wine bottle support rods and each is cantilever-mounted at its first end on the support member equidistantly from and parallel to each other, flush and flat against the first face of the support member, in equidistantly positioned rows, each of which contain at least three of the support rods;
(c) as first mounting means for the support rods, a plurality of identical round holes in the support member whose diameter is less than that of the support rods and the center of each of which is coaxial with the longitudinal axis of one of the support rods over which each hole one of the support rods is mounted;
(d) as second mounting means for the support rods, a plurality of straight identical round metal solid mounting rods whose diameter is slightly less than the diameter of the round holes, whose length is at least the sum of twice its diameter plus the thickness of the support member,
wherein one each thereof is slip fitted and positioned in one of the round holes with a first threaded end thereof projecting beyond the first face of the support member, wherein a second end of each thereof is rigidly connected to an enlarged member which (i) has a flat under face which is perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the mounting rod; (ii) acts as a stop which prevents the second end of the mounting rod from entering the round hole; (iii) is pressed flush against the second face of the support member so tightly that the mounting rod cannot rotate within the hole in which it is positioned; and (iv) maintains the longitudinal axis of the mounting rod perpendicular to the first face of the support member; and wherein at least the portion of the first end of each of the mounting rods which projects beyond the first face of the support member is threaded cooperatively with respect to the threaded end portion of the metal rods and is tightly screwed connected thereto, whereby the enlarged member at the second end of the mounting rods and the threaded first end of the support rods cooperatively maintain the support rods firmly and immovably mounted against the first face of the support member, and
(e) optionally, a plurality of installation holes in the support member for installing the support member in a stable vertical position; and wherein
(i) the support rods are long enough and three of which when mounted on the support member side-by-side in the same row are strong enough to stabily support two filled wine bottles having the same or substantially the same sidewall diameter;
(ii) each row of the support rods is uniformly spaced from adjacent rows thereof at a distance such that wine bottles of a size for which the wine rack is designed which have the narrowest sidewall diameters can be stored above those which have the widest sidewall diameters on adjacent rows of the support rods without their side walls touching;
(iii) the support rods in the same row are spaced uniformly from
Gibson , Jr. Robert W.
Millen White Zelano & Branigan P.C.
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