Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 12, 1995 TAG: 9510120025
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUSINESS EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
From behind the wheel, she started envisioning sandblasted designs in mailboxes and fence posts.
Her creative daydream is close to becoming a reality.
The U.S. government in July granted Balentine a patent for a silk-screening and sand-blasting process that can be used to carve designs into such things as furniture, doors, mirrors and kitchen accessories. Balentine has no plans to manufacture the products herself but wants to license her process to companies that do.
Over the past two years, articles about Balentine's work have appeared in various furniture industry publications, including the trade journal, "Furniture Design and Manufacturing." When the U.S. Department of Energy's National Innovation Workshop is held at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center Nov. 3-4, Balentine will be one of the featured speakers. The workshop is for innovators and entrepreneurs who want to bring their ideas to the marketplace.
A native of Washington, D.C., Balentine, 47, attended Duke University where she graduated with a teaching degree in 1970. She married and moved to Highland County where she lived a country life but lost her husband and a child when the family's home burned.
Her second husband, from whom she is now divorced, is a former Highland County cabinetmaker now living in Roanoke. He helped Balentine develop the sand-carving process.
Balentine first began using sand-carving techniques at a wooden mailbox business she operated in Highland County. The process incorporated hand-cut stencils that often were hard to remove without damaging the wood, and it proved to be slow and labor-intensive.
Looking for a better way, she turned to screen-printing as a method to apply the designs to wood. That required working with a Charlotte, N.C., chemical company to develop a liquid compound that could be applied with screen-printing techniques and then hardened into a tough, rubber-like mask of the design to be sand carved.
A Chicago company built the screen-printing and infra-red equipment for curing of the chemical mask. All that was needed then was a machine to strip the mask away once the sand-blasting was done.
Balentine approached a Greensboro, N.C., engineering firm with that problem, but the engineers told her it would take six months and thousands of dollars to come up with the equipment she wanted.
Instead, she went down into the basement of her home in Roanoke's Wasena neighborhood and, within a week, came out with the equipment she needed, Balentine said.
"Basically, we've taken the sign-maker's craft and turned it into mass production technology," Balentine said. The process can be applied to a wide variety of materials, including wood, metal, marble and glass, and is unique in that color can be applied along with the design when the mask is in place.
Balentine said she had never lacked self-confidence, noting she was raised by a bright and talented mother who taught her she could do anything she wanted to do. Her belief in God, her perseverance and the fact that she wasn't stopped by the lack of an engineering degree all played a role in developing the patent, she said.
Now that she's been granted the patent, Balentine said she's ready to go out and aggressively sell licenses for the process. The only problem is that her company, Woodpecker Products Inc., is out of money, having spent $450,000 to get to its current point. Balentine, the company's only salesperson, said Woodpecker is looking for another investor to help it market the process.
Balentine already has one partner. While she owns the patent to her process, Andre Bahdio, a New York City financier who provided the money to develop Balentine's process, is listed with the State Corporation Commission as the company's president. He is also Woodpecker's sole stockholder, Balentine said.
To demonstrate her process to companies that might be interested in licensing it, Woodpecker set up a factory at the Roanoke Industrial Center in Southeast Roanoke. That plant has closed and its equipment is being moved to Cranford Silkscreen Process, a High Point, N.C., company that plans to license the process.
Cranford, which already works with the furniture industry, is buying an exclusive license to use the process on furniture, except for ready-to-assemble types.
Cranford President Robert Leonard said he believes there also is the possibility of sub-licensing the process to furniture companies that want to do the carving themselves.
Bassett Furniture Industries last fall displayed several pieces of sand-carved furniture at the High Point wholesale furniture market. It didn't sell, said Matt Johnson, national sales manager of Bassett's Impact Furniture division.
But the lack of sales can't be blamed on the carving, Johnson said, adding that a number of factors, including the furniture's design or the price, may have been at fault. Balentine's process is "very innovative" and creates a "unique decorative motif."
by CNB