How did you get into this work? It seems highly specialized.
Back in the late 1980s, I worked for a sign company called Sage Signs. At that time, the channel letters we made were illuminated by neon. The company purchased a neon plant so we could learn how to bend neon ourselves. We trained for one day to learn how to bend double backs, which is basically shaping a U in a stick of glass tubing. We learned how to weld electrodes onto glass—which is key to making neon light—and how to process a neon unit. A neon unit can consist of a straight piece of glass up to eight feet long, a letter or a series of letters.
I had no other schooling in the art of making neon. Most of it was on-the-job training, looking at other neon signs to see how it was made and bent and taking my best shot at it. I practiced putting two pieces of glass together and doing double backs. I broke a lot of glass and burned myself quite often. (Just by looking at a piece of glass, you can’t tell if it’s hot or cold.) In the early days, my neon wasn’t pretty but it worked. When I first started, I was told I wouldn’t be able to make a good unit of neon for years, that you had to bend neon under apprenticeship for 10 years before you could sell it. Within less than a year, we were making good glass and selling it, too.
What’s something about working with neon that most people don’t know or would be surprised to learn?
All neon glass is bent in reverse. I make a paper pattern of designs or letters backwards and put it flat on my table with a metal screen on top of it. The metal screen prevents burning the paper when I lay hot glass on the pattern. I have three different fires that I use to bend neon glass: a cannon fire burner, a ribbon, and a hand torch. The cannon burner concentrates heat at a single point, which is used to weld glass together and make tight bends. The ribbon burner has an adjustable flame on it, which is used to make long bends. The hand torch can also be used to make welds, but also is used for tipping off tribulation, which connects the neon unit to a pumping station that processes it.
What makes neon work is an electrode at each end of a unit. One electrode is positive and the other is negative, which causes the molecules in the gas to race from one of the electrodes to the other 60 times a second. While doing so, the molecules run into each other, causing mini explosions, which creates the light you see. There are two common gases in neon: a red gas called neon, and a blue gas that is argon. While using argon in a unit of neon, you have to put a BB of mercury in the unit after processing, which helps intensify the light.
What’s the difference between real neon and LED neon? Does this difference matter?
LED and neon both put off beautiful light. As an older technology, people love neon because it has a lot of history behind it. There are tons of people across the United States that are neon collectors and they keep me busy. Neon draws people in like a bug to a bug light. They just wanna look at it close up.
You don’t see a lot of new neon jobs going up outside because it is fragile to point. LEDs have taken over that market. LEDs are durable and take less energy to run, but we’ll see how long they last. I have fixed neon or come across neon that was from the ’50s and ’60s and still working.
Is there a particular sign you’ve made that you’re most proud of? Why?
I’m proud of all of my work I’ve done over the years. There are too many jobs that I have done in more than 39 years of bending neon to single out just one job that’s my favorite; they were all a blast to build or repair. To name just a few: the Paramount Sign, Amarillo National Bank parking lot sign, and Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I’m also proud to have helped the Route 66 association in New Mexico by repairing glass on their neon signs in Tucumcari after a hail storm came through there last year and wiped out a bunch of
their neon.
Neon fell out of fashion for several years but seems to be coming back. What do you think is driving the resurgence?
Restoring old neon signs is good money. The driving force is neon sign collectors buying, selling and trading old porcelain neon signs. There is a market out there for old nostalgic neon signs. People love to have a few neon signs in their man caves. It just looks cool and is a great conversation piece. I have a customer that has more than 77 neon beer signs in his barn, and he is just one of many collectors. There are more than 60 to 70 years worth of neon signs, which neon benders and sign companies made over the years. So that means there’s a lot of neon that needs to be repaired or restored. I don’t see it fading into the sunset anytime soon.
