US 4,903,929 AGranted

Portable apparatus for holding objects

OwnerRonald W. Hoffmaninventor

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Abstract

A holding device which clamps onto a wide variety of fixtures, such as furniture, pipes, counter tops, trees, rocks, fences, etc., and holds pole-shaped objects, such as billiards cues, gun barrels, fishing rods, measurement instruments, painting tools, etc., is disclosed. A C-clamp is formed from a plastic U-shaped member which movably couples to a plastic, pole-shaped member. The U-shaped member has a plurality of retained openings therein for selective installation of one or more retainers. A retainer press-fits into one of the retainer openings and is rotatable therein so that a wide variety of holding orientations may be achieved. The retainer includes an open, curved, resilient member which holds the pole-shaped object. The held object is installed by being pressed into the interior of the curved member at the opening thereof. Such pressing expands the curved member sufficiently so that the opening permits passage of the held object. Resilience of the curved member then urges the curved member to return to its quiescent shape. The held object is removed by being pulled out of the retainer through the opening therein.

Claims12

Dependent claims

A portable holding apparatus for supporting a pole-shaped object, said apparatus comprising:

(a) a first member having a gripping surface;
(b) a second member having a gripping surface, said second member being movably coupled to said first member so that a distance between said first member gripping surface and said second member gripping surface varies to clamp a fixture between said first and second member gripping surfaces;
and
(c) retaining means including
(i) an open, resilient curved member extending away from said first member for receiving and gripping said pole-shaped object, said member having opposing sides for surrounding said object, said curved member being compressible from an expanded position in which said sides are sufficiently far apart to allow installation and removal of said pole-shaped object to a quiescent position in which said sides are sufficiently close together to grippingly confine said pole-shaped object, and
(ii) snap-in connection means comprising a retainer opening formed in said first member, said retainer opening being surrounded by an opening wall;
and a plug member coupled to said curved member, said plug member being dimensioned to conform with said retainer opening and being formed from a deformable, resilient material which compresses away from a quiescent shape during installation into said retainer opening and which expands after installation to substantially fill said retainer opening, thereby creating sufficient frictional clamping forces between said plug and said wall to rotatably retain said plug in said retainer opening.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.