This invention relates to furniture legs, and more particularly to joints for connecting legs to tabletops or worksurfaces.
Many known tables, for example, conventional wooden tables with wooden legs, include table bottom rails that extend from lower surfaces of tabletops or worksurfaces. In a typical four legged table, the table includes four table bottom rails arranged in a rectangular configuration that provides leg mounting structure at the interior of each of its four corners. In such known tables, upper ends of the legs are engaged within corners defined by interesting pairs of the table bottom rails. Fasteners are inserted through the table bottom rails and into sidewalls of the upper ends of the legs, anchoring the upper ends of the legs against the inwardly facing surface of the table bottom rails. Since the fasteners extend transversely through the table bottom rails and into the upper leg ends, the fasteners resist bending-type forces that tend to pull the upper leg end away from the tabletop or worksurface.
However, in many instances, table bottom rails are not desired or cannot be used in connecting a leg to a worksurface. Such instances include, for example, tables that have non-wooden legs, tables with designs that include thin profile worksurfaces with no ancillary downwardly extending structures, tables that require large amounts of user knee clearance, and/or others. Regardless of the particular reason for not including table bottom rails for mounting legs, tables that do not have such bottom rails typically include leg mounting plates at the joints between the worksurfaces and legs.
Typical leg mounting plates can be integrated into upper ends of the legs, or are separately mounted to the legs and the worksurface. The integrated and separately mounted leg mounting plates have mounting holes through which fasteners extend, for attaching the mounting plate to the worksurface. Typical leg mounting plates have an area that is larger than the upper end of the leg that attaches to the mounting plate. In this configuration, adequate clearances exist between the holes on the plate and the outer surface(s) in the leg to allow a user to first install the mounting plate to the leg, and then install the mounting plate and leg assembly to the worksurface. In other words, typical mounting plates are larger than the respective leg ends. The relatively larger mounting plates are at times visible, at least from certain view angles, when the table is completely assembled. Visually conspicuous mounting hardware such as mounting plates can distract from or compromise the appearance of the overall table or worksurface.
During use of such known mounting plates, when legs or the mounting plates are subjected to off-axis or bending-type forces, the forces tend to be directed or concentrated into certain ones of the fasteners holding the mounting plates to the worksurface. This unbalanced concentration of forces into one or few of the fasteners can cause the fastener(s) to loosen or withdraw from the worksurface and, correspondingly, the joint between leg and worksurface can fail.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a worksurface leg mount assembly that overcomes the aforementioned problems and issues with the prior art. It is another object of the invention to provide a worksurface leg mount assembly that distributes forces through the mount for balancing the application of such forces between the fasteners holding the mount assembly to the worksurface. It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a worksurface leg mount assembly that is visually concealed or visually inconspicuous during use.