US3419018A - Flexible hair curling device - Google Patents

Description

Dec. 31, 1968 N. SOLOMON 3,

FLEXIBLE HAIR CURLING DEVICE Filed Oct. 25. 1965 my "M NJ ATTORNEY United States Patent 3,419,018 FLEXIBLE HAIR CURLING DEVICE Nathan Solomon, PO. Box 550, Englewood, NJ. 07631 Filed Oct. 23, 1965, Ser. No. 503,315

5 Claims. (Cl. 132-40) ABSTRACT or THE DISCLOSURE A longitudinally extendible one-piece plastic curler having a helical strand defining a cylindrical surface. A series of circumferentially spaced teeth extend longitudinally from the strand with their axes parallel to the axis of the curler. Each such tooth faces but is not joined to the consecutive helix for forming a yieldable curl supporting surface of the curler.

This invention relates to a device for forming curls in the hair and particularly to a one piece hair curling device adapted to maintain the hair on the roller when a tress of hair is wound thereon.

Hair curling as practiced today in the home and beauty shops involves division of the hair of the user into various tresses or swatches. Each of the tresses or swatches is evenly wound on a hair curler and by dampening the curled tress with water or by chemical or heat application or the like, the swatch or tress is caused to take the form imparted to the hair by the curler.

As is well known in the art, during hair waving treatment, the hair filaments elongate when dampened with water or waving lotions and contract when drying. If a curler does not embody adequate means for compensating for the elongations and contractions of the hair filaments during the curling process, the hair swatch wound thereon frequently becomes loosened and the individual hair filaments become displaced and take the curl form existing under the loosened or displaced condition, which does not produce the optimum curl, which of course is the desired result of the curling operation. Also, a satisfactory curler should allow the hair to be sprayed evenly over the curler surface, and should not provide points of stress concentration with respect to the hair filaments. Often after hair waving lotion has been applied to the tress of hair, the individual filaments become brittle and are easily broken or harmed by stress concentrations.

Further, the wave setting solutions widely used to form curls are usually highly lubricating in nature, thus making it difficult to roll the hair curlers with the fingers of the user without encountering slippage between the fingers and the curlers. Also, the waving lotions used today are often corrosive to many of the inexpensive metals heretofore used in curlers, thereby requiring the use of expensive, non-corrosive metals or coating the less expensive metals with paint, enamel or the like so as to be resistant to the chemicals in the solution. However, the ends of the metal strip or coil, where cut, are often easily corroded by the hair waving solutions.

Additionally, after the hair was rolled on the curler, separate hair retaining devices were required to retain the rolled hair and curler in proper position on the head of the user. These hair retaining devices deformed the curls and oftentimes hurt the hair strands.

A wide variety of hair curlers have been developed including those made entirely of plastic but they have not proved entirely satisfactory.

Heretofore, curlers were made of metal or plastic with a series of apertures cut in their rolling surfaces, such as diamond or circular shaped apertures, for reducing the weight of the curler and to permit passage of air to aid in ice drying. However, these prior art curlers lacked inherent resiliency and flexibility to readily conform to the contour of the scalp or maintain the hair under constant tension when hair was wound thereon or else were too expensive to sell widely.

A curler overcoming many of these disadvantages is shown in Patent 3,170,469. This curler while being flexible had the individual helices of the coil interconnected which restricted free movement. Also, a separate hair holding element was required.

Other prior art curlers used a combination of metal springs and cotton mesh netting. This type of curler used costly material and was diflicult and expensive to assemble.

A cotton mesh cover is placed about the spring surface so that any radial compression of the curler, such as occurs during winding of the hair, separates the mesh from the spring circumference, thereby producing an uneven curl. Also, this type of curler required a separate structure, such as a brush, for initially holding or grasping the ends of the filaments or strands of hair of the tress to be curled, when starting to roll the tress. Often times the separate hair holding means made the curler non-conformable to the scalp and was uncomfortable for the user to keep the curler in the hair overnight and irritated the scalp of the user. Additionally, the metal, especially the ends, was adversely affected by chemicals and dyes used in hair waving solutions sometimes discoloring the hair.

Therefore it is an object of the present invention to provide a simple and effective hair curler which retains the hair filaments from circumferential movement about the periphery of the curler when a swatch of hair is wound thereon and which simultaneously holds the hair filaments in place.

It is a further object of the present invention to provide a resilient, one piece hair curling device in any color requiring no assembly and which allows the hair to be spread evenly over the curling surface, and which restrains the hair wound thereon from movement.

Another object is to provide a one piece, flexible curling device which is sufiiciently rigid to maintain its general shape while having a swatch of hair wound thereon, and readily conforms to the scalp of the user and also flexes during the winding operation for holding the wound hair under tension during wetting and drying of the hair and returning to its original shape after removing the swatch of hair.

Still another object of the present invention is to provide a hair curling device having an integral spring coil for supporting the tress Wound thereon and for maintaining flexibility and compressibility of the curler which coil thereon will not be discolored or adversely affected by the acids, hydroxides, chemicals or dyes, such as used in hair waving solutions.

A still further object is to provide a. light weight hair curling device that will positively engage and maintain a swatch of hair placed on the device preparatory to and after winding the hair onto the body of the device without injury to the individual strands of hair and sufficiently flexible to allow the user to wear the curler overnight without discomfort, if desired.

Still another object of the present invention is to provide a hair curling device that accomplishes all of the above and yet is simple to use and inexpensive to fabricate, light in weight, allows free evaporation of any moisture in the hair and is reliable and durable in use.

Other objects and features of the invention will be apparent when the following description is considered in connection with the annexed drawings in which:

FIGURE 1 is a front elevational view partly broken away of a hair holding device in accordance with the present invention;

FIGURE 2 is an enlarged cross-sectional view taken along line 2-2 of FIGURE 1;

FIGURE 3 is a portion of the hair holding device shown in FIGURE 1 being flexed; and

FIGURE 4 is a fragmentary front elevational view showing hair rolled thereon.

Referring now to the drawings, there is shown an elongated, generally cylindrical, curling device 11 having for its curl support surface a spiral or helical coil 14 having the desired length and defining the desired diameter.

Coil 14 defines a generally cylindrical body or winding drum, which is expandible and contractible in both a longi tudinal direction and inversely in a radial direction. At opposite ends of coil 14 and integrally connected thereto are a pair of circumferentially continuous end rings 16 and 18. If desired, the outer diameter of end rings 16 and 18 may be greater than the outer diameter of coil 14 so as to aid in winding the roller and prevent filaments of the tress being wound on the curler from being laterally displaced from the curler body.

Integrally connected to the helices forming coil 14 and disposed about the outer peripheral surface of coil 14 are a series of longitudinally extending flexible teeth 21, which cooperate to form an open mesh netting. Teeth 21 are cantilevered since they are joined only at their base to a helix. Teeth 21, as shown, have a corresponding facing bristle extending from the adjoining helix. Also, teeth 21 and 23 are shown which extend substantially the entire distance between consecutive helices. Advantageously, to ensure suflicient rigidity a few strands 25 interconnect corresponding portions of coil 14 or consecutive helices. To obtain additional flexibility if desired, strands 25 may be serpentine in shape. Since teeth 21 and 23 do not interconnect adjacent helices, the mesh formed thereby, permits free bending and longitudinal movement of the curler body and free return to its original shape, such as shown at 24 in FIGURE 3. Further the cantilevered construction of teeth 21 or 23 permits ease of stretching of curler 11 and allows radial flexing of mesh between adjacent helices of coil 14.

Upon initially rolling hair on the mesh, teeth 21 and 23 between adjacent segments of coil 14 will flex inwardly. The inwardly flexed portions of teeth 21 maintain the filaments of the swatch of hair wound thereon under tensivestress at all times, because of the expansive forces tending to return the teeth to their normal peripheral position. As the hair filaments elongate and contract because of being treated with Water, lotions, etc. and through drying, the resiliency and freedom of movement or give, of teeth 21 tend to compensate for the elongations and contractions of the hair by flexing outwardly from their inwardly flexed position or permitting them to be further flexed inwardly if the hair further contracts. Similarly, curler 11 can expand and contract longitudinally in accordance with the radial forces exerted thereon.

Curler 11 is only flexed so as to readily conform to the head of the user, as shown in FIGURE 3. Bending curler 11 draws the coils of said helix towards each other at the compressive portion, indicated at 24, and separates the coils of said helix at expanded portions 26. Coil 14 tends to separate, when expanded as at 26, and overlap when compressed, as at 24. Even when curler 11 is severely flexed or compressed, the mesh remains integral to the helix and generally maintains its cylindrical shape. For these reasons, the curler is readily compressible, but sufficiently firm to support a curl.

Advantageously the outer surfaces of end rings 16 and 18 are knurled or roughened in some manner to form a roughened surface to aid in preventing slippage of the curler during the rolling operation, when the highly lubricating waving lotions are used.

The helices of coil 14 should be made sufficiently rigid and under tension to maintain its unstressed shape. Applying an axial stretching or separating force to end rings 16 and 18 separates the helices causing teeth 21 attached to consecutive helices to move apart. Upon removal of the stretching force, the helices snap back to their. unstressed position and teeth 21 will penetrate the swatch of hair 28 wound thereon, as shown in FIGURE If necessary, an additional aid to initially hold the ends of a swatch of hair in place on the peripheral surface of curling device 11 preparatory to rolling may be used by having a multiplicity of spaced apart teeth or bristles 40 extend radially outwardly from the outer peripheral faces of coil 14. Teeth or bristles 40 are relatively long and slender and preferably made of a resilient flexible material. It is desirable that bristles 40 be made from a material that is quite resilient and has a high degree of springiness so that they always maintain their shape, and will not harm the filaments of hair or scrape the scalp of the user while wearing the curler. As seen in FIGURE 4, coil 14 has bristles 40 integrally projecting therefrom throughout its entire length. However, the portions of coil 14 having bristles 40 extending therefrom may be varied. Teeth 21, as well as 40, positively hold and maintain the ends of a swatch of hair in position on the surface of the curler in a simple and easy manner preparatory to rolling the swatch onto the curler as well as restraining the strands of hair fro-m circumferential movement during and after Winding and prevents the strands from slipping axially along the periphery of the curler.

After the tress or swatch of hair has been wound upon the curler of the present invention, the swatch is secured by pulling apart the ends 16 and 18 of the curling device 11 which separates adjoining helices of coil 14 permitting some hair to be received between teeth 21. Releasing the ends 16 and 18 of curling device 11, the prestressed coil 14 causes the helices to assume their unstressed position and teeth 21 penetrate the swatch of hair to hold the hair in place and to retain the curler from being accidentally displaced from the hair.

It will be understood that the curler device is a one piece integral curler and can be constructed of any suitable material. But from the standpoint of economy and weight it would be desirable to form the same from a plastic material having reasonably high flexibility so that the resulting molded curler produces a firm and yet slightly yieldable tubular body which will be soft upon the head and yet can readily conform to the contour of the scalp of the user while giving the integral bristles sufficient resiliency and durability for long and continued use. Such a resilient plastic may be polyethylene. However, the present curler will be flexible and conform to the head of the user even if the helical coil is made of a rigid material.

Thus, there has been disclosed a one piece hair curling device having an elongated, flexible, expandible and compressible hollow body for forming a light weight, ventilated flexible structure on which a curl is formed and any moisture in the hair can evaporate freely. The curling device of the present invention positively holds and maintains the separate strands of a swatch of hair on any portion of its rolling surface without further effort required by the user, as well as exerting continuous tension on the strands forming the curl for automatically adjusting to the tension of the curl during its setting and drying process. Furthermore, the present invention by being flexible, produces a more natural curl since differences of tension of the hair which naturally occur in the curling process will produce a curl which is not too regular or uniform in diameter and therefore will not look artificial. Additionally, a method has been shown for producinga one piece curler having a spiral hair support element.

While a preferred embodiment has been described above, it will be understood that many variations thereof will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit thereof. Therefore, it is intended that the foregoing description shall be deemed illustrative only and not construed in the limiting sense, the present invention being defined solely by the appended claims.

What is claimed is:

1. A one-piece hair curler comprising a continuous helical coil defining a generally tubular body with spaced apart turns and a series of circumferentially spaced longitudinally extending flexible teeth cantileverly mounted to the helical coil and facing an adjoining helix for forming a flexible, yieldable, circumferential wall of said curler.

2. A hair curler as in claim 1, further including longitudinally extending flexible strands integrally interconnecting selected adjoining helices of such coil.

3. A one-piece plastic hair curler comprising annular end members, a continuous helix forming a plurality of helical coils extending between and integrally joining said end members for defining a generally tubular body, said coils being longitudinally spaced from each other, and a series of circumferentially spaced apart longitudinally extending teeth integrally joined only at one end to said helix and extending toward an adjoining helix for forming a flexible, yieldable wall of said body, whereby said curler can be longitudinally elongated to receive hair therein.

4. A one-piece hair curler comprising a continuous helical coil having longitudinally spaced apart turns defining a generally tubular body and a series of circumferentially spaced apart flexible teeth integrally connected only at one end to the helical coil and having their axes parallel to the axis of said curler for forming a flexible, yieldable, circumferential wall of said curler, so as to enable said turns to deflect and deform laterally of the roller axis and adapted to be elastically extended longitudinally to receive or release hair between said teeth and said coil.

5. A curler as in claim 4, further containing a multiplicity of flexible bristles extending radially outwardly from said coil.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,275,007 9/1966 Thackeray 13240 3,314,435 4/1967 Winkler 13240 3,334,638 8/1967 Behrens 132-40 FOREIGN PATENTS 1,257,559 2/ 1961 France.

LOUIS G. MANCENE, Primary Examiner.

G. E. MCN-EILL, Assistant Examiner.

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