My name is Michael Blasek, I work at Neon Signs Australia.
I learned my craft in 1981, so this is my 36th year working in the neon industry.
My father taught a glass bending school and I had dropped out of university twice and
he suggested the free tuition would be good for me and so I took him up on it.
I was in his third class and immediately after that I traveled to New Zealand and
when I ran out of money there I applied for a job at Claude Neon and they hired
me and I've been working in the neon industry ever since.
The actual job itself is very difficult to learn, but once you learn how to do it
you get an enormous pride in making the neon lights. It's amazing when they
light up and I know from just watching businesses thriving that have our lights
on it's a way of, a definite way of attracting attention to your business so
I know that it works and I have real confidence in what we make and what we
do.
We generally are given a design, what we'll normally do is reverse that and
we'll draw the tube size to fit the letters or the actual artwork. So we're
working backwards on a reversed image on a table. We take straight tubes and
bend them into shape, small bends at a time to get them to fit the intricacies
of letters or curves of a logo and then we make some tubes in single pieces. Some
tubes we join together to make larger tubes so all of this is done at the
glass bender's table. Then we put electrodes on that carry the current
from the power supply. Those are just welded on with a hand torch and joined
to the glass, but when that bending process is finished then we move to a
pumping process where we purify the tubes, take the air out of them with a
vacuum pump and then we, when they're processed with either neon or argon gas
and sealed off, when electricity is attached to the wires the gas ignites
and carries that light from end to end. So it's a two-step process of bending
and then pumping and once those signs are finished we take them out and install
them either on a sign or on a building or in someone's home.
We use a LPG gas burner. It's variable from about 20 centimeters out to 600
centimeters. So if you want to make a very intricate bend you just dial it
down to a very small flame. If you want to make a large curve you expand the
ribbon out and heat up 600 millimeters at a time and you work one bend from the
other in a process where you keep working. Sometimes you set the tube down
that you've just heated up and you start on another part of the sign and you
might be working on three or four pieces simultaneously and finally they all
come together. You weld them together and they become the finished piece. So you
try not to be standing around waiting for things to cool. If something, if you
it's too hot to work on, you'll set it aside, start a different piece or another
letter that you're working on. But basically it's heating and shaping and
just progressively working from the middle out to the ends to complete each
piece of glass.
Depending where it goes you don't want to have it close to public. That could bump
into it or break it. So generally we keep it above head to height. If it's
outside there's special requirements we need to make sure that water, wind and
hail don't destroy the sign before time. But the signs do last very well out in
the weather and there are plenty of signs in Brisbane that are 25 to 30 years old
and are still working properly.
Neon light glows in a wave of light and it lights 360 degrees so all the way
around the tube the light is coming out. An LED is a pin point of light and it is
generally one directional. You can put mirrors on it and lenses to try and
disperse the light but you'll never get it to travel more than 180 degrees from
the direction it's pointing to. So if you want it to backlight a sign you have to
turn the LED around. You can't simultaneously front and backlight an
LED sign with a single LED. Whereas with neon the light goes out the front end
comes out the back.
It's really the same reason. Neon is considered old-fashioned so some people
want modern signs. They want LEDs or they want a changing message sign so that
they can advertise different things on different days. That suits some businesses.
A neon sign can animate but its ability to change from day to day is very
limited. Some people like the fact that neon is old technology and that's what
we're seeing a lot now as people wanting nostalgic looks or a lot of the signs
that are made in shopping centers and in streets look very similar and so it's
hard for them to stand out. When you put a neon sign next to ten other signs
that are made out of acrylic and have LED in them and look fairly similar the
neon sign will always stand out and that's that's one reason it should be used.
