Patent ID: 7467647

Claim:
A process of making shoe laces having a plurality of tubular layers including at least an inner tubular layer and an outer tubular Layer, and also having certain desired features such as color, shape, thickness, length, and at least one outer tubular layer ridge-like protuberance that extends outward from the outer tubular layer sufficiently to be felt by the fingers of a young child so that it is then usable to make each shoe lace easier to tie by very young children, said process having the following alphabetically-identified steps: (A) installing raw yarn on a first plurality of spools on which raw yarn is to be dyed a specific selected color for each spool of raw yarn; (B) placing each of said spools in a container of dye for dying the raw yarns on each of the spools a desired and specifically selected color; (C) removing each of the spools having dyed yarn thereon from the container of dye; (D) removing the dyed yarns from their spools and forming each of them into yarn skeins; (E) placing each of the skeins of yarn in a warm air dryer and drying the yarns; (F) cooling each of the skeins of dyed and dried yarns using cooling air; (G) placing the dyed, dried and cooled yarns on a second plurality of spools; (H) when the spools of step (G) are storage spools that are not also loom spools, moving the dyed, dried, and cooled yarns onto a third plurality of spools that are loom spools for use with a particular type of loom which may be at least either a Jaquard loom or a needle loom; (I) selecting a yarn from which at least one ridge-like protuberance is to be woven in the shoe lace outer tubular layer concurrently with the other yarns so that it protrudes from the outer surface of the outer tubular layer; (J) placing that selected yarn on another loom spool; (K) placing the loom spools, on which the dyed, dried and cooled yarns and the loom spool holding the selected yarn of step (I) are received, into a loom machine so that all of the yarns are connected to appropriate parts of the loom machine in readiness for making tubular lengths of shoe lace stock with the outer layer thereof having the aforesaid protuberance formed on and extending outwardly from it; (L) operating the loom using computer-generated directions to form in one continuing step the tubular lengths of shoe lace stock with the shoe lace stock having at least one of the shoe lace features in addition to color, including one or more of the protuberances, (M) removing the shoe lace stock from the loom machine and cutting the shoe lace stock into one or more precisely set shoe lace lengths; (N) tipping the precisely set lengths of shoe laces to provide hard ends of each of the shoe laces; and (O) passing all cut and tipped shoe laces through an inspection station and inspecting all shoe laces for quality and sizing.