US2734746A

US2734746A - Shuttlecock

Info

Publication number: US2734746A
Authority: US
Publication date: 1956-02-14
Anticipated expiration: 1973-02-14

Description

1956 SAMETZ ET AL 2,734,746

SHUTTLECOCK I Filed March 11, 1952 ATTORNEY United States Patent SHUTTLECOCK 6 Louis Sametz and Irving Sametz, Westport, Conn., assig'nors to Louis Sametz, Inc., Westport, Conn., a corporation of New York Application March 11, 1952, Serial No. 275,916 1 2 Claims. (Cl. 273-106) This invention relates to shuttlecocks such as the projectile popularly called a bird in the game of badminton.

Shuttlecocks must be extremely light in weight to keep down the distance of their flight. They have a nose piece or leading end' that is usually made of cork for extreme lightness in indoor play but which may be made of slightly heavier sponge rubber or other resilient cellular material to give a slightly greater weight needed to counteract air currents in outdoor play. To preserve the required lightness, that part of a shuttlecock that trails and steadies the flight of its nose end is traditionally composed of preferably overlapping natural feathers whose shafts converge toward their points of junction with thenose piece. In its elementary form and by dictionary definition a shuttlecock is a cork stuckwith feathers.

Real bird feathers of uniform selected size and quality and the handicraft involved in assembling them with a cork nose piece make the conventional shuttlecock objectionably expensive and fragile. It has been proposed to substitute for natural feathers various artificial. flaring structures of equivalent light weight, such as a thin walled perforate shell forming a frusturn-like trailing skirt fixed to the nose piece of the shuttlecock.

Problems are encountered in attempts to devise a sulficiently light weight means of assembling such artificial skirt with a simple body of cork with such structural strength that the assemblage will withstand repeated shocks of battering by battledores such as the modern stranded badminton racket. Lack of successful solution to this problem has lead to dispensing with natural cork to form the nose piece and to sacrificing the superior performance of cork to the use of artificial structures as substitutes. For example it has been proposed to prolong a conical skirt of plastic material into a hollow thimble of the same material intended to serve as a nose piece. 0

A nose end so constructed does not have the peculiarresilient properties of cork nor does it give the desired performance in rebounding from the racket. The trajectory of shuttlecocks so made is erratic andunsatisfactory to skilled players. Also the plastic thimble will crack and lacks durability in service. a A principal object of this invention is to solve the long troublesome problem of'attaining durable simplicity and low cost and dependability in the assemblage of a cork nose piece with a plastic trailing. skirt ina shuttlecock. so

A specific object is to maintain essential lightness of weight in the overall structure of the shuttlecock without depending on the permanence or bonding power of adhesive to withstand blows of the racketthat tends to disrupt the assembled relationship of the cork nose piece and the plastic trailing skirt. Y

A further object is to'retain the use' of a plain contoured body of natural cork for the nose piece, on which body a minimum or no machining or contour forming operation need be formed to adapt it for assemblage because it is difficult and costly to tool natural cork into accurately 7 dimensioned shapes.

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A contributary object is to so 'restrainthe cork relatively to the plastic skirt, particularly in the direction in which the nose piece receives its blows from the racket, that' the res'ulti'ngimpact tends only to squeeze the cork against a solid plastic backing rather than to loosen the cork from adhesive bonding to the skirt.

These and other objects of the invention will appear in full particular from the following description of illustrative embodiments of the invention having reference to the accompanying drawings wherein:

Fig. l is an elevation of a shuttlecock embodying the present'imp'rov'ements shown partly in outline and partly 'in section on a diamet'ral plane, a part of its pattern of skirt perforations being shown sketchily.

Fig. 2 is a plan view'of the shuttlecock of Fig. 1 showing its conical skirt in outline with the pattern of the skirt perforations and the nose piece retaining disc omitted.

Fig. 3 is an exploded view of parts of the shuttlecock shown in Figs. 1 and 2', taken in section on the plane 33 in Fig. 2 with the pattern of skirt perforations omitted.

Figs. v4 to 7, inclusive, are enlarged fragmentary detail views taken respectively on section lines correspondingly numbered in" Fig. 3 looking in the direction of the arrows.

Fig. 8 is an enlarged fragmentary view of the pattern of perforations in the shell wall of the trailing skirt.

Figs. 9 and 10 are respectively assembled and exploded fragmentary views of a modified construction of shuttlecock shown' partly in section ona diametral plane.

. Figs. 11 and 12 are respectively assembled and exploded fragmentary views of a still different" construction of shuttlecock shown partly in section on a diametral plane.

Figs. 13 and 14 are respectively assembled and exploded fragmentary views of a shuttlecock for outdoor play having a self anchoring body of resilient cellular material substituted for thecork and shown partly in section on a diametral plane.

A preferred embodiment of the present improvements is shown in Figs. 1-7', inclusive, wherein the composite nose piece 12 that is shown assembled in Fig. 1 and disassembled in Fig. 3, includes a strikable body of natural cork having n'otooled recesses nor projections in its surface contour. As usual the cork 12 may carry a thin leather covering 13 forming a flexible wear skin all over its exposed surface which is of a cylindrical merging into semi-spherical contour.

The bare butt end 14 of the" cork 1 2 fits and isfirmly lodged in a socket'or rabbet afforded by the junction of the peripheral Wall 16 of a ring structure 17 with a partition 18 extending crosswise the, inside of ring 17 and perforatcd by the aperture 19. For some of the purposes of this invention it is not essential that partition 18 contain any aperture. Also, instead of being a circularly continuous annular shelf,it may be broken up into a series of circularly spaced flanges or lugs projecting inwardly from ring wall 16. Ring wall 16 surrounds and closely fits the butt end 14' of the cork 12 where it is bare of the leather covering 13. y At the side of partition 18 opposite from rabbet 15 the materialqf the molded plastic ring 17 is extended to form a thin walled barrel 20 integral with a hollow flaring frustum-like trailing skirt 21 which comprises a circularly continuous thin walled shell 22 finely apertured at 23 to produce a pattern closely simulating, the disposition of barbs in a real; bird feather. The feather simulating pattern of perforations is further characterized by a longitudinallycentral shaft 24 in the pattern representation of each'feather and these shafts become representations of feather quills 26 as they extend toward their points of jointure with the barrel 20. The shafts 24 and quills 26 converge and increase in cross sectional size and flexural strength as they approach barrel 20 as is shown in Figs. 4 to 7, inclusive.

The preferred pattern of perforation shown in enlarged detail in'Figs. 1 and 8 is new with'these improvements and will be noted to feature a predominance of elongate apertures 23 disposed at one angle of inclination in comparison with the relatively shorter extent of apertures slanting in the opposite direction. This is believed to exert a steadying torque effect of spin inducing nature on the skirt 21 during flight of the shuttlecock through the air.

In the construction above described the seating of the flat end of cork 12 against partition 18 while the rim of the cork is closely encompassed by the ring wall 16 does away with any dependence for permanence and strength on adhesive bonding of the nose piece 12 to the skirt 21 to withstand the shocks of impact of the racket or battledore against the nose piece. Such blows would otherwise tend forcibly to drive the cork toward the skirt and disrupt its assembled relationship.

While not greatly depended on for mechanical reinforeement against impact by the battledore, there may be employed in addition to the strikable cork body 12 of the nose piece a disk 25 comprising a head and a boss of less compass outstanding therefrom for retaining the strikable cork body in the rabbet and that seats on the top portion of partition 18 and projects in certain forms of the invention shown in Figs. 1, 3, 11 and 12 through aperture 19 into surface contact with the strikable body of cork 12. Thus if desired an adhesive may be applied between the bottom surface of the boss of disk and the top surface of cork 12 to aid in the retention of the cork Within the rabbet 15. The porous nature of a cork surface enables cork to be bonded to cork more securely than to a smooth surfaced molded plastic wherefore it will be of advantage to make retaining disc25 also of cork.

Figs. 9 and 10 show a modification of the structure wherein a boss on the strikable body of cork 31 projects through the aperture 19 in partition 18 and thus reaches into surface contact with a plain flat form of cork retaining body or disk 32 which may be cemented to the cork nose piece as proposed in Fig. 3.

Figs. l1 and 12 show a further modification wherein a recess 35 is formed in the strikable body of cork 36 in registry with aperture 19 and the cork retaining body or disk 37 carries a boss 38 that reaches down through the aperture 19 and fits into the cork recess 35 to which it may be cemented with exceptional holding power by a suitable adhesive.

The retaining disks 25, 32, and 37 may be of other suitable light weight material than cork, such as molded preferably porous plastic, and particularly for outdoor play any one of the

nose pieces

12, 31 and 36 may be made of very light artificial material having the proper resilience to rebound properly from a racket such as a light weight grade of vulcanized molded sponge rubber or a suitable porous plastic material possessing a proper degree of resilience.

However, if the nose piece is to be made of sponge rubber or a porous plastic of high elasticity and toughness enabling considerable distortion in shape without tearing or taking a permanent set, I prefer to shape the nose piece like the sponge rubber body 40 in Figs. 13 and 14. Here an annular groove 41 is flanked by a disparts of the shuttlecock easily disassembled by merely pulling them apart. The same principle of sturdiness afforded by these improvements is here likewise involved, in that the nose piece 40 is positively backed up by seating directly on the partition 18. Here also the outer cylindrical surface of ring 17 can be made to fall flush with the outer surface of the sponge rubber nose piece 40 by forming an annular shoulder 42 on the latter. Where sponge rubber is used as the nose piece the leather covering 13 will not be necessary because the cellular structure of sponge rubber becomes closed by a tough solid skin of the same material in the process of expanding and vulcanizing it in a mold.

I prefer to form the integral trailing skirt 21 and cork holding, partitioned ring 17 as an injection molding of polyethylene or nylon, or other tough, lightweight, resilient and flexible water resistant molded plastic such as ethyl cellulose or polyvinyl chloride. Cellulose nitrate and vinylidine chloride resins have some of the properties desirable in this kind of article.

The appended claims are directed to and intended to cover all equivalents and substitutes for the particular specification and arrangement of parts herein proposed as shall come within the broadest fair interpretation of the claim language.

We claim:

1. A shuttlecock comprising a nose piece, and a hollow thin walled frustum-like trailing skirt skeletonized by a pattern of perforations, comprising a circular series of approximately parallel narrow slots of shape and dis position to radiate in oppositely slanting directions from respectively opposite sides of circularly spaced converging axes, said slots on one side of each of said axes being substantially longer than the slots on the opposite side of the same axis thereby to admit less air through the aggregate slots of one slanting disposition than through the aggregate slots of the other slanting disposition, whereby aerodynamic torque is produced tending to rotate the shuttlecock as it flies through the air.

2. A shuttlecock including in combination a nose piece comprising a homogeneous uniformly resilient body of solid cork contoured to form a bluntly rounded strikable end portion whose surface merges into that of a substantially cylindrical opposite end portion of said body of cork terminating in a plain transverse surface devoid of hollows and projections, a trailing skirt of homogeneous plastic material comprising a flaring frustum-like shell having perforate flexible walls converging toward and integral with a relatively rigid hollow barrel structure of said material comprising a tubular wall and a transverse internal flange forming a socket receptive to said cylindrical end portion of said body of cork, said flange having one face seated on the annular margin of said plain transverse body surface, and a discal cork retainer for said nose piece comprising a head overlapping the opposite face of said flange and a boss of less compass than said head outstanding toward and fastened tortable resilient flange 42 that is capable of yielding distortively so that it can be forced through the aperture 19 in partition 18. Thus the internal edge of the partition comes to occupy and snugly fit the groove 41 whereupon considerable resistance is offered to pulling the nose piece 40 out of the rabbet 15 when it has once been lodged therein. This does away with any need for a retaining disk such as 25, 32 or 37 and makes the two to said plain transverse surface of said body of cork.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS D. 163,367 Carlton May 22, 1951 1,393,407 Tenney Oct. 11, 1921 2,338,274 Yancey Jan. 4, 1944 2,485,420 Timpe Oct. 18, 1949 2,556,029 Cohan June 5, 1951 FOREIGN PATENTS 645,014 Great Britain Oct. 25, 1950 476,373 Canada Aug. 28, 1951