I had the two broken tubes replaced and luckily the color is a pretty close match. I think it looks great! There is some buzzing coming from the transformer but I will leave it alone unless it gets worse.
My great grandfather got a patent on a neon lighting in 1938 that near as I can tell allows for changeable lighting effect. An uncle put together a cool display of one of the pieces and his patent for my aunt which I’ve now inherited along with the remaining parts from my ggf’s work. The family lore is the tech is basically stolen from him by a business partner and he loses a lawsuit trying to get it back. All that remains is this box of parts. And I don’t want to store it away for another few decades till my kid needs to deal with it.
I have two main questions
Can someone explain what the patent actually was for and significance of it? (Did he lose out a fundamental tech lighting Las Vegas for instance?)
Are these parts of value to anyone? Not to sell, I can’t imagine they have a value worth selling, but for donating to some neon museum, collector, or enthusiast?
Very happy with how this one turned out. It was a blast being able to make my own tubing! Filled with plain argon which gives it a gentle glow and lets the colors stand out.
I’m looking for a way to dim the brightness of this neon. From my understanding a dimmer could cause problems and damage the sign. My only thoughts would be to take it to a tint shop to get it sprayed with an automotive headlight tint or to add a tinted plexiglass piece of acrylic in front of it but could see problems with both of these options. Is there any safe way to dim the brightness of a neon sign??
I was wondering whether it’s possible to build a control system that slowly turns neon lights on / off instead of just immediately blinking on ? I understand it might need specialist soft / hardware so if anyone had any advice on that it would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks:)
It's my first real piece of neon, it was also at the pawn shop so long they had it marked down to $20. They even joked about paying me to take it out of their shop forever.
I know there might be a few reasons, but im curious if any experts know the exact cause why the beer foam tube is dim at one end. Electrode connection, mercury migration? TIA
I rescued this sign from a defunct nightclub near me but the upwards-facing doubleback boots were filled with rainwater which caused both wires on one of the electrodes to totally snap off (see my original post).
I took a gamble and ordered some conductive epoxy (ConductiveX Electro-Bond 80 ) to try a hail-mary repair. I carefully dremeled away some glass with a skinny diamond bit to reveal about a millimeter of the embedded copper wire then wrapped the electrode in new wire before epoxying it all together (see second photo). And it worked! No idea how long it'll last but for $20 it was already worth it.
Picked this Labatt lite sign up today to add to my collection. Hopefully looking to get into neon bending soon.
I am familiar with the traditional neon light tubing used for business signs etc, but is it actually possible to have larger volumes (e.g. a football sized volume) to light up when filled with neon gas etc?
From a friend of the family who is a great customer at the local beverage shop
We got this before anchor was no more and will cherish it as long as we can
I recently bought a glass neon sign where the glass is mounted to a metal skeleton, but the plastic supports no longer firmly grip the tubing. This is allowing the glass tubing to fall away from the frame in some spots. What is the best solution to hold the tubing to the supports? Can I use wire of some kind? I don't want to replace the supports themselves.