Appeal No. 1996-2802 Page 6
Application No. 08/140,142
provided. The material contemplated for use in the McCan
method does not include wood wafers. Therefore, while the
above-noted teaching might be considered to be broadly
applicable to the compressing step of the appellant’s claim 1,
the reference clearly has no relevance to the remaining steps
recited in the claim.
Turner discloses a method for preparing wooden shafts for
bending into shovel handles or the like, which includes the
step of axially compressing an elongated shaft that previously
has been softened by heat treatment. Although not explicitly
established in the reference, it would appear that the axial
compression is applied along the grain of the wood. However,
while Turner confines and compresses the wood in the manner
recited in the third and fourth steps of claim 1, from our
perspective any relevance to the method recited in the claims
can be established only by taking this Turner teaching out of
context.
Pfleumer is directed to the making of solid wood items
such as buttons, and Heritage to a densified wooden
construction sheet. Both are cited for their teachings of
compressing wood to particular levels so that the resultant
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007