Seam for woven papermaking fabrics

Claim 1

In a seam for joining two ends of woven fabric having spaced warps interwoven with spaced wefts (hereinafter referred to as woven wefts) in a selected repeated pattern, the woven wefts and warps being crimped during the weaving of the fabric to have knuckles, which seam is of the type comprising: a. a plurality of seam wefts added to the fabric after it has been woven, the seam wefts being crimped to have knuckles corresponding to the knuckles in the woven wefts and spaced from one another to correspond with the spacing between the woven wefts, and also comprising; b. a plurality of three-warp patterns in which a first warp of the fabric terminates along a first zone of the seam, a second warp adjacent the first warp terminates along a second zone of the seam spaced from the first zone, and a third warp adjacent the second warp terminates along a third zone of the seam midway between the first and second zones, the improvement wherein; 1. two other warps terminate along the seam between each threewarp pattern, the two other warps being adjacent to each other; 2. said two other warps being arranged to terminate along two other zones positioned outside said first, second and third zones, said two other zones comprising a first other zone spaced from said first zone on the side thereof remote from the third zone and a second other zone spaced from said second zone on the side thereof remote from the third zone, with the spacing between the first zone and the first other zone being equal to the spacing between the first zone and the third zone, and with the spacing between the second zone and the second other zone being equal to the spacing between the second zone and the third zone; and 3. one of said other warps being arranged to terminate along the first other zone and the second other warp being arranged to terminate along the second other zone.