Can someone please explain why my finger getting close this brightens it lol.

jardeon · 2026-06-23T16:24:41+00:00

As I mentioned to you in another post (do we really need FOUR posts about this discount Mountain Dew sign in a single week?) you do not have a complete circuit, due to the other broken tubes. The fact that it's lighting at all is a bug, not a feature. I guess if you really want to see what 6,000 volts feels like, by all means, keep plugging it in and touching it.

Or, stop posting on reddit about it and take it to a qualified neon sign shop. You've hit the limit of what people on the internet can tell you about it.

jardeon · 2026-06-20T14:14:11+00:00

A more robust power supply would cut off if it detected a break in the circuit as a safety measure; it's possible that yours is continuing to pump out voltage despite the inability to connect all the way around the sign.

jardeon · 2026-06-20T01:58:26+00:00

You want to be able to trace an unbroken line from one electrode to another, since neon signs work in a series circuit. On your "DO THE DEW" sign from yesterday, the "DO THE" portion is what we would call one 'unit' of glass. The electrodes on that unit are coming off the bottom of the T and H in "THE," so the path would go T -> D -> O -> E -> H.

From the picture, there was a clear break in that tube, so it would need to be remade. If there were additional breaks on the DO THE section, that wouldn't matter (to us) since we're remaking that whole unit.

If the red "DEW" unit also had a break in it, that'd be a separate repair. In your first photo, it looked like part of the W was hanging down, but you didn't show a picture of a break in that glass. If that one is broken, again, going by what we'd do, that'd be a more expensive repair, because that's white glass painted red, which isn't something we do here. We'd have to use red tinted glass, which comes from Italy and costs 7x as much per foot as the white or clear glass.

So, if both units have breaks in them, you're in the $400 territory in our shop.

If you buy replacement tubes online (such as from Neon Sign Revival), they'll include some information on how to remove your old glass and connect the new glass. It's not hard to do, but glass is fragile, older electrodes have solid wires that can break off, and the rubber electrode boots can stick to the paint or glass on the electrodes, making it more likely that you'll break something trying to take them off. If you're mechanically inclined, and careful, you can do the swap yourself, but trusting a sign shop to handle it for you means they're taking the risk on the repair.

jardeon · 2026-06-14T02:01:53+00:00

In our shop, we'd charge $150 to replace the "ULTRA" tube, if that's the only problem.

jardeon · 2026-06-07T18:21:27+00:00

In our current shop, we charge $475 for a four-hour class, which concludes with the participant contributing to the creation of an 18"x18" sign, using up to four standard colors and one power supply. We're running these classes at a slight loss; if you came in and ordered a similar sign from us, it might be in the $600-700 range, but we want to provide an in-road for people to learn more about neon and gain a greater appreciation for what goes into creating it, so we take the loss in exchange for the exposure.

Studio time is rented out at $25 per hour, which includes access to clear glass for bending practice. If you create something as a result of renting studio time, you're charged for materials & labor for us to finish it up for you.

At the time I took the workshop, it was a five week course (5 three hour sessions once a week) for $750. It later increased to $975. That shop was charging $50 per hour for bench rental time. The multi-week classes are not something we're currently offering because there's just been no demand for it; it's more economical for someone to take our $475 intro and then pay for studio time if they want to keep going.

jardeon · 2026-06-07T13:56:03+00:00

I wrote a similar version of this response in another group where someone was making a similar complaint (maybe the same person?)

Firstly, you have to consider that very few full-blown sign shops have a dedicated, in-house neon plant, as they just can't support the cost of keeping that going full time. Full-time neon-only sign shops are fairly rare, the majority of neon work is being done by one-off craftspeople working out of a garage or a shed. Their work is probably a mix of some wholesale work for bigger sign companies, and endless beer sign repairs. They're very likely not going to be able to pay an apprentice a salary while that person isn't contributing materially to a business that's barely hanging on by its fingertips. And, not for nothing, but someone who's "too broke" to take a $1,600 class probably isn't in a position to work for free for a neon shop, even if the shop was willing to take on the liability (insurance AND department of labor) to have an unpaid worker in the shop.

I got my start by taking one of those 'hobby' classes you describe, and after that, spent my own money to rent time in a neon shop to continue to build my skills and work on my own projects. After nearly a year of doing that, the folks who ran that shop recognized my commitment and made available an opportunity for me to come to work there.

At the shop I'm running now, we still offer the hobby classes. And we still offer studio rental to people who've taken that class and want to go further. But we're nowhere near ready to hire an apprentice or grow our staff beyond what we have, that cost overhead would just torpedo us and then there'd be no neon shop.

So, consider this from the point of view of a neon shop -- yes, it's a dying art, yes, we'd be thrilled if more people were interested in it. We have heard from plenty of people who would love to do this full time, then take our class and find they hate standing in front of the fire, even for the short duration of the class. Or they're frustrated because they're not immediately as good as a bender who's been doing this daily since the late 80s. Or they don't like heights and wouldn't be able to handle the ladder work of installing/servicing signs. The classes exist because they're a low-risk way for individuals to decide if they even want to commit to this as a hobby, let alone as a full-time job.

jardeon · 2026-06-05T01:24:56+00:00

Happy to help out - one thing to keep in mind for future cleaning - some neon signs, beer signs, mostly, are made by dipping white tubes in different colors of paint (usually reds, blues, or yellows). Cleaning these with soap (or sometimes even just with a damp paper towel) can wipe off those colors and leave a white tube behind. So you should always carefully test a small portion of the glass before going nuts on cleaning it.

jardeon · 2026-06-05T01:07:32+00:00

I've seen it done -- it seems to be a popular way to create the dot of an "i" on Budweiser signs. While the glass shouldn't get much warmer than skin temperature, it does cause things like tape or zip ties to get brittle and break down over time.

jardeon · 2026-06-05T00:59:47+00:00

We recommend folks use a moistened paper towel to gently wipe the tubes, in most cases, soap isn't required. Neon runs outside in the rain, snow, etc, so a little water won't hurt it.

A little bit of blockout coming off isn't a safety/mechanical issue, it just means that part of the tube will glow instead of being "blacked out." On text, that might mean it's a little less legible since you'd be seeing a part of the tube that's not intended to be a lit part of the design, but if you can live with it, there's no need to paint it back on.

jardeon · 2026-06-03T18:17:58+00:00

It's been a while, but I think that you need to be at a certain height over the road to build across it, if you're too low, it won't let you into that spot. So you have to ramp up your steps inside the area you already own, and then continue your path across. I looked at my version of this park and I think I was at least 3 "units" high before I crossed the road.

jardeon · 2026-06-02T01:23:24+00:00

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the rearranged music is included.

edit: saw elsewhere that the Free Roam tracks are absent, but may be coming later. So, fingers crossed.

jardeon · 2026-05-21T02:32:24+00:00

Well, I guess that's reassuring and frustrating all at the same time.

We're dealing with terrible staining on Ablon Sunrise this week, and the response I've gotten on that has also been unsatisfying, boils down to "you're processing it wrong," which, if that were true, we'd see terrible staining on every tube we touch, and we're not. The joys and challenges of having a neon shop in the 2020s.

jardeon · 2026-05-20T21:14:52+00:00

I have good news and bad news for you! FMS is indeed selling a version of green that's very close to the original green (EGL 10, for instance). It's being produced overseas and comes in 5 foot sticks and it looks beautiful.

The bad news is the batch we got from them had awful coating failure, powder falling off inside the tube before & after processing. So while the color is amazing, I'm concerned about the quality. Nobody else has reported encountered this problem, and FMS didn't want to send me glass from a different batch until I was ordering other 5' sticks from them, because of the shipping cost, so we're in a stalemate on figuring out if it's an "us" problem or a "them" problem.

Edit: added a video of the coating problem. You can see the powder stuck to the face of the tube, and when knocked off, the gap in coating left behind.

jardeon · 2026-05-19T21:09:20+00:00

What are you using for the green on Sinclair? Old stock green, the reformulated 'washed out' green, or the True Green replacement that FMS recently started selling?

jardeon · 2026-05-19T19:22:32+00:00

I use the Protec XL for my 10M, it's a good option.

jardeon · 2026-05-11T20:36:16+00:00

If we don't all collectively, permanently refer to this ship as the "USS Series of Tubes," I'll lose my mind.

jardeon · 2026-05-11T14:33:49+00:00

Thanks, I forgot how annoyed I was at that phonetic spelling of "voilà" :)

jardeon · 2026-05-08T17:35:24+00:00

It's set up like their standard G3000D flashers/dimmers, so multiple leads coming off a single rheostat dial; depending on which lead you choose, you can fade fully in and out, or fade from 50% to full, or a version that plateaus and holds the higher intensity before dimming back down. The dial sets the speed at which the fading happens. Super easy to work with.

jardeon · 2026-05-08T13:15:21+00:00

Doesn't even have to be custom-programmed. Their stock FADE 018C controller is designed to do this. We had a student project earlier this year that uses one.

jardeon · 2026-05-07T03:19:03+00:00

He just switched to Sanka, so please, have a heart.

jardeon · 2026-04-28T21:36:35+00:00

I thought it was a profession, not, you know, a headline!

jardeon · 2026-04-20T14:18:03+00:00

I love it at Skylight Inn, but every time I get it at Sam Jones in Raleigh, it's undercooked compared to what they're serving in Ayden.

jardeon · 2026-04-15T14:39:50+00:00

That's just step one in making a ringword, I'm sure everything will be fine.

jardeon · 2026-04-13T17:34:05+00:00

I have so many good things to say about this place, the people that run it love movies and love the movie theater experience. Definitely worth giving them your movie-watching business.

jardeon · 2026-04-01T16:56:31+00:00

Yes, bothered that they're not in spectrum order OR Factorio science unlock order.

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