A keyboard musical instrument such as a piano has legs for supporting a piano case on a floor, a pair of glued laminated woody members like an L-letter, a pair of decorative plates and a caster are assembled into the leg, and the pair of glued laminated woody members is directly bolted to the piano case so that the legs are hardly broken even when large bending moment is exerted on the legs during relocation of the piano.

A fiber reinforced elastomeric seismic isolation bearing and method protects structures and their contents from the damaging effects of earthquakes. The bearing is a block of a specially designed composite material consisting of an elastomer matrix in which are embedded, through its depth, high stiffness pretensioned fibers extending in various horizontal directions. This produces a device which has a very low horizontal stiffness compared to its vertical stiffness. The isolator is mounted between, and connected to, the structure it supports and the foundation upon which it bears. Because of its low horizontal stiffness the bearing decouples the structure which it supports from the damaging horizontal components of the ground motion associated with an earthquake while the benign vertical motion is transmitted into the structure almost unchanged. Thus, during an earthquake, the structure, which typically will rest on several supporting isolators, and its contents experience small acceleration, velocity and deformation. The isolation bearing and method includes the use of elastomeric laminae with parallel pretensioned fibers, forming a series of cells which are vulcanized into an adherent connection and positioned to be connected between a structure and a structure foundation.

An engine mount bushing for use on a motor vehicle. The bushing includes a hard case, and a core located within that case. The bushing further includes an elastomer isolator contacting the core and case. The bushing also includes a foamed elastomer isolator contacting the core, the case and the elastomer isolator.

Spiral bands having a plurality of convolutions of a high tensile strength composite material are formed by feeding a plurality of continuous high tensile strength fibers through an uncured resin to form a web, depositing the web on a release web having at least one substantially flat surface to form a laminate, winding the laminate around the mandrel to form a plurality of overlapping convolutions, curing the resin in the composite web to set the convolutions in a spiral configuration, and then removing the release web from the composite web. The convolutions of the spiral bands in accordance with this process have substantially flat surfaces and an elastic memory. These bands can be used to reinforce axially extending structures having internal forces directed radially outward therefrom by wrapping the band around the structure with a layer of adhesive applied to hold the convolutions in place.