Color fan deck with paper blades painted on both sides

#The present invention relates to color sample display devices for paint products where paint is illustrated on both sides of the device and to a method for making the color sample display device. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a color sample display device which is a color fan deck with a plurality of painted paper blades that display colors on each side of the color fan blade. The fans have blades which are pivotally joined together to form the fan or fan deck.

#Paint colors often are displayed on color swatches mounted on a flat planar base which are joined together to form a deck or a fan deck with blades which are pivotally spread or fanned to display color. In the past, each blade in the deck had one or more color swatches which displayed one or more colors on one side of the blade. In order to display a large number of colors, either a plurality of individual swatches on each blade had to be made smaller or a larger number of individual blades with color swatches needed to be combined in a single deck. The resulting deck became rather large and cumbersome to transport and use.

#Color display devices need to display colors attractively. The color displays on the individual fan blade color cards cannot be wrinkled and curled and swatches affixed to each side of the base of the blades must lay flat on the card or fan blades. In the past the flat planar mount base of the fan blade with swatches affixed thereto had to be fairly thick to avoid wrinkling and curling. This also increased the thickness of the fan with each blade displaying color only on one side of the fan blade. Further, it has been found that color swatches with paint coatings interfacing each other transferred color to the underlying or interfacing painted surface; hence, fan blades with color swatches on both sides risk transfer color to the underlying or interfacing blade surface. This is especially the case where dark colors transfer color to an underlying lighter colored painted surface.

#FIG. 1 is a top view of a fan deck with the individual blades precisely aligned on top of each other.

#FIG. 2 is a top view of a color fan deck with the blades rotatably or pivotally moved so that the color on each side of the blade can be seen.

#FIG. 3 is a side view of an individual fan blade.

#As illustrated in FIG. 1, a fan deck 50 includes a painted paper blade 20 with paint applied to both sides of a base paper 30 sized and painted on both sides. The fan deck 50 also includes an attachment opening 40 through which a screw or other suitable fastener may be put to hold a plurality of individual blades together so that the blades may be pivoted around the fastener as described below. The fan deck permits the use of relatively large paint coated swatches which can be used to provide a realistic display of paint color. Ideally, the individual fan blades 10 (FIG. 2) will be about 2 inches by about 8 inches or even larger.

#Referring to FIG. 2, a fan deck 50 includes a plurality of individual blades 10 which are attached through attachment opening 40 for pivotal rotation to open (and close) and “fan” the blade and the display color on both sides of the paint coated paper blades. As noted above, any type of fastener device such as a screw, rivet, nut and bolt, and the like may be inserted through the attachment opening 40 to secure the paint coated blades 10 together. With “fanning” or opening the fan deck, different fan blades in the deck may be viewed by pivotally rotating individual blades.

#FIG. 3 illustrates a side view of an individual blade 10 of the fan deck 50. A flat base paper 30 has sizing 25 in the form of two sizing layers 25a and 25b on both of its sides and has painted layers 28 on both sides of the sized base layer. The paint used to make the fan is a water dispersible or solvated with water. In an important aspect, the water based paint has an acrylic polymer or copolymer binder. For dark colors the amount of pigment relative to the amounts of binder resin (the resin which forms the film when the paint dries) is reduced (such as to provide a pigment to binder ratio of about 1 to about 5 for black) over that generally used for lighter colors (such as a pigment to binder ratio of about 1 to about 2 for white and a pigment to binder ratio of about 1 to about 3 for red) where the ratios of amounts of pigment to binder are effective to minimize transferring color to a lighter chip interfacing with the darker chip of an interfacing blade such that the colors will not deleteriously vary to provide a color variance as measured by a delta E of not greater than about 2.3 and preferably not greater than about 1. It has been found that without this aforedescribed technique, interfacing colors of paint coatings may transfer to one another and most particularly from dark to light paint.