Safety Stock Carton Knife

This invention relates to a shipping carton opening knife, and more particularly to a safety carton knife that protects the user and the carton contents.

A common, everyday activity experienced in most stores, e.g., grocery stores, is the opening of dozens or hundreds of shipping cartons of cardboard or paperboard, i.e., boxes, to remove and stock the product contained therein. The usual technique for opening the cartons is by quickly cutting the cartons with the sharp blade of a knife. Typically this is done by rambunctious teenagers. Unfortunately, there are two all too common detrimental happenings which can occur during this activity. One thing which happens is injury to the person by his/her own knife. Available statistics indicate that the related injuries to store employees can be thousands of dollars per year because of this type of accident. The other occurrence is damage to the product contained in the carton. For example, individual paperboard or plastic packages of food, cereal, clothing, etc. are frequently sliced by the knife. This damage is understood to be in the range of about five billion dollars per year in the U.S.

An object of this invention is to provide a stock knife which is safe for the user and which inhibits damage to the container contents.

The novel knife has a handle and a blade with a lateral cutting notch. The laterally oriented mouth of the notch is smaller in width than a centimeter so that a person's finger will not fit therein. A blunt knob is at the juncture of the cutting notch edge and the outer end of the blade, so that no sharp point is exposed. A transverse, diagonal guard plate is at the inner edge of the notch, with one surface facing toward the handle to protect the user's fingers, and an opposite surface facing toward the notch to limit depth of cut by the blade into a carton.

These and several other objects, advantages and features of the novel knife will be apparent upon studying the following specification in conjunction with the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a side elevational view of a knife of this invention;

FIG. 2 is a front elevational view of the knife, viewed from the left side of FIG. 1; and

FIG. 3 is a top plan view of the knife, i.e., looking down from the top of FIG. 1.

Referring now to the drawings, the stock carton knife 10 there depicted comprises an elongated handle 12 having a pair of ends 12a and 12b. This handle can be made in typical fashion of two halves 12c and 12d (FIG. 2) which interfit with each other and are secured together as by a conventional threaded fastener (not shown). These secure a blade 14 therebetween, the blade projecting from end 12a of handle 12. The exposed end of blade 14 has a pair of blunt, i.e., dull, lateral edges 14a and 14b which form the front and back edges of the blade, and a rounded, convex, dull outer end 14c. In edge 14a is a lateral cutting notch 16 which has a sharpened cutting edge 16' and a laterally opening mouth 16a. Notch 16 is generally diagonally oriented relative to the elongated dimension of the knife, extending diagonally from mouth 16a toward the outer end 14c of blade 14. Cutting edge 16' includes a sharp inner edge 16'a closer to the handle 12, and a sharp outer edge 16'b further away from the handle and closer to the outer end 14c. This outer edge 16'b joins end 14c of the blade with a blunt knob 18 at this outer juncture. This knob has a width greater than the blade width, and preferably is in the form of a sphere, but may take other blunt configurations, so that there is no sharp point at this outer edge of mouth 16a.

Along the inner edge 16'a is a diagonal guard plate 20 extending generally parallel to edge 16'a, and which is normal to blade 14. It straddles the blade so as to protrude from the two opposite faces of blade 14 in the manner depicted in FIGS. 2 and 3. This guard plate has a first surface area 20a which is oriented toward the handle, to protect the fingers of a user of the knife. It also has a second opposite surface area 20b oriented toward the notch. This plate is immediately adjacent to and along the cutting edge 16'a to cause surface 20b to limit the depth of cut by the blade into a carton. In use, therefore, blade 14, clamped between the two halves 12c and 12d of handle 12, with lateral notch 16 straddled by blunt knob 18 at one edge and guard plate 20 at the other edge, is forced into the carton, the depth of the puncture being limited by guard plate 20, and then pulled along the carton to cut it, the guard plate serving to protect the fingers and also to limit the depth of blade penetration into the carton.

Conceivably certain details of the preferred embodiment shown could be altered. Hence, the invention is not intended to be limited except by the scope of the claims and the reasonably equivalent structures to those defined in the claims.