Decorative gift bow maker - videos and patents

[Jon]

Bought my wife an early holiday present: a bow maker, for making decorative gift bows. Now our living room is a bowmaking factory, and I'm a brilliant gift giver.

The bow making tool produces fancy, large gift bows, of the type you might see in a department store holiday display. The bows are made from bulk ribbon. Ribbon isn't free (especially the fancy velvet type), but the value proposition is fairly evident here - inasmuch as decorating gifts has value.

Like many tools, upon first examination, one immediately thinks: I could've easily made that. Turns out there's quite a world in bowmaking; it's like the feminine equivalent of knot tying.

I think there's a strong distinction between the automated bowmaking that produces the 50-per-bag bows you might get for $10, and the larger, more grandiose bows (still not sure if those are mass-produced). Let's take a look:

A common option on Amazon: the Pro Bow. Clearly a homemade tool gone pro. A board, holes, dowels. Apparently some people can make bows with just their hands, essentially cat's-cradling with their fingers as the dowels. 5:50 video:

The Pro Bow was granted US patent #8430282 B2:



A more industrial version, apparently used to create the more commodity bows, this 3M Sasheen S72 model is fairly common on the web:

A patent search is turning up numerous other options. I guess there are a lot of different kinds of bows (gift bows, hair bows, corsages, florist shop bows, etc.). I like the hand-cranking aspect of this one, granted US patent #6691903 B2:



This simple jig caught my eye too; granted US patent #2569943 A:






More:

https://www.google.com/patents/US8430282
https://www.google.com/patents/US2569943
https://www.google.com/patents/US6691903

[Jon]

Not exactly sure what to think of this. If it works consistently IRL as it does in the GIF, then maybe. Still waiting around for a good spray-on wrapping paper.

[Jon]

Wait for it.