Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Peterson Neon”.
One of the things that you may not think is handcrafted is neon neon signs, um believe it or not. So we’re going to talk to somebody right now who um who works with neons like hi? How are you i’m good, i’m shauna peterson nice to meet you um, so we are streaming right now on the make magazine website and uh. So i was just saying that um you make neon uh by hand or are you bending on by hand? Why do you do that? Um? Because there is one machine i think that’s been developed to bend neon, but it’s like one that can do a slow gentle curve. Otherwise, there’s been no machine created that can bend the glass right at the right moment and in the configuration that each custom pattern needs, and so it has to be basically done by hand so um.
When did you start to learn how to how to bend neon and make this stuff um? Actually, this gentleman who’s doing some demos, for me, rj taught me in 1987. wow great. I recruited him a couple years ago to come up to maker faire and yeah and help me do demos, so we have we’re having a reunion.
Oh that’s awesome. That’S really cool um! I you know. I i’ve talked to uh some some other people about this and and and curved tubes with with leds inside, are sort of like creeping up like, but i like neon just i love the look of it. I love that i love the glow. You know i mean like so so what what do you say to these people, if they’re going to if they have to make a choice? Well, i think the nice thing about led – and you know leds – that are built into a tube – is that they’re very accessible for most all users. The problem is you can’t get the color range that you can get with neon? You can’t get as tight a bends.
You can use l-wire, it doesn’t get as bright as neon so for commercial purposes. I think neon is pretty much at the top of its game. So can we see uh some neon bending in action yeah? Actually you can stay there. Rj wells taught me how to bend glass, so he can do some demos for us and i’ll just talk about what he’s doing all right, that’d be great all right.
So we have rj here, curving some glass. So so, what’s the what’s with the tube in his mouth, what’s going on he’s just made the letter r, but um he’ll, probably glad grab some straight rod and then, while he’s bending i’ll tell you what he’s doing but the the blow hose that he has uh, He puts in one end of the tube, and then he puts a cork in the opposite end and what that does is, as he heats, the glass up and it gets molten the outer wall of the bend as he stretches it wants to collapse, and so he Gives a quick puff of air into the tube right after after bending it and it blows it back out and keeps the diameter consistent. So right now he’s going to do what’s called a splice, because he’s finished uh that straight piece that he bent into an r and he wants to continue working so he’s going to splice on a straight piece, so he’s getting both ends nice and hot he’s. Putting them together – and you can see, he’s blowing into his blowholes now to make sure that he’s getting a nice tight seal with no leaks, then he’s going to kind of pull it out. That’S interesting because i guess when you, when you blow through it’s the the the glass, that’s not molten, that’s surrounding it is almost serves as a template. Oh yeah, for the molten glass yeah. So you you basically when you’re welding on, like that, you kind of eyeball it and you use that rigid piece to uh to blow it out and keep it consistent. So now he’s gon na got that handle he’s gon na mark his next bend on he’s.
Actually, we usually work on a pattern, but he’s just doing things free form, so he’s got the second you know neon is bent flat on the front and all the bends are on the back, so we always bend in reverse. That’S why you know when people in front of him are looking at it. It looks like an r, but it’s a backwards. R to rj and all patterns are in reverse for us.
So i’m guessing that there aren’t many dyslexic neon vendors. Well, if they are, they have someone else, make the patterns fair enough, fair enough, but he’s now gon na bring so he’s got the level the glass on the second level he’s gon na drop it down to table level. Oh now, yeah! So, even though the glass that it slightly changes color just to a little bit of a yellow, it doesn’t show its heat that, like, if you were to put paper or one of the pencils or the wood block on there, which he’s maybe gon na. Do no he’s not but um, if you even now, if you put that wood next to that hot glass, it would it would torch it. I mean smolder it. So it doesn’t show the heat like when you’re heating metal and it gets red hot.
But it’s definitely hot. That’S that’s fabulous! Okay! You know that was. That was excellent. It was wonderful talking to you all right.
Thank you. Thanks a lot. .