thephranc@gmail.com

Part of my new job is to fetch permits from Maryland, DC, Virginia and DE. I've gotten some in minuets and others take months depending on comprehensive sign plans or historic conform-ability. Most take a few weeks. Each muni is different and with in each office there are some people who can get it done and other miserable government sloths who hate their job and punish the companies by unneeded delays. Fees are all over the place and they will kick a sign down to another agency just to milk that extra $5. Today I spent almost 4 hours is PG county just for issuance of permits that had all ready been approved the week before. 17 permits cost over $1000 and the desk is only allowed to hand out 4 at a time. So you go in for 4 get back into the queue get 4 rinse repeat. All of this after it sat in review for 3 weeks because they wanted a photo of the building to show no other tenants had rights with in the 10% of frontage.( They use to have this but kept records in a basement and there was a flood so everything got ruined. They still have the paper work and its still wet and molded so they wont look through it ) This was for a reface of old awnings that had already been approved for the exact same thing under the previous permit for that location years ago. They just wanted to slap on new decals. Permitting cost more than install and material by almost 300% When you ad the permit cost and the billable time for me to sit there. If you have to deal with permits regularly I advise getting chummy with the drones.

There is a strip mall that has every channel letter in exposed outline. Half of them don't light or are 1/2 out. Why? The building owners can't find any one who can fix them. So I gave him a few names of the companies that still service neon around here. As soon as the boss lady gets me a bucket truck or tow behind I'm going to go out and find ever neon sign I can that needs fixing and solicit the shop owners. Its a dying part of the industry for sure. It would help a lot if sign companies would stop lying about how much better LEDs are or that there is no way to fix neon and how it needs to be retro fitted.

We were so slow this week that Our printer ran for maybe 5 hours all week. Its been a nice change and we've managed to clean things up and organize. Next week will be a crush with many bigger jobs all lined up to drop at once.

Yesterday we were at a bank auction for a sign company that shuttered doors about a year ago. Two big purchases we made were a Vision engraver and a Gerber Saber 404. Now the engraver will run om Flexi and the Gerber will run on the Omega 4 we have for the edge and envision machines. Would it be worth it to upgrade to Omega 5 to run the router?

Thats the kind of crap that gives neon a bad name.

Neon is dead here but thats typical for the time of year. Luckily we still have enough bits that it should last a little while. If this fall and winter is like last year we may be out of most stuff by next summer. Except the caps that go on the back of glass housings, have 1000s of those. Hopefully the manufactures or the dealers don't price gouge on the neon parts.

I'm liking SW more and more. The Williams stuff just has too many specific primers for each material. And the SW guys are less than a mile away. On the flatbed point, right now we have 2 printers running all the time. One does just banners and is an older solvent type. It however is on its way to printer heaven. I think the production manager is going to destroy it on the next head strike. The other latex printer runs all day and into the night and 1/2 of that is stuff that could be printer straight to the shocard, foam core and coroplast. My not having to apply prints to stuff would free up time to get the shop into more manufaturing.

Talked to the Mathews guys today and price checked with N Glantz ( way too expensive ). Tomorrow I'm going to hit up the PPG place and see what getting it from them will cost. As nice as a mixing station would be we just dont do enough painting to justify one. The next big expenditure I hope will be a flat bed. We do so much printing here that direct to substrate would be the best investment now. Bucket truck after that. This place has a lot of growth potential once staffing and over head are baleneced out better.

With the newish low VOC rules in Maryland I was wondering what every one was using for "automtive quality" sprayed paints. I talked to the Serwin WIlliams guy today to get a feel for their product lines. I also found out its cheaper to buy the same paints from the Fisher Auto Parts store than from SW itself. Monday I plan on hitting up Mathews. Typically I use to use Duplicolor Paint Shop because of how easy it was but at the new place I need a way to colour match. This also rules out the paints I use to paint cars like House of Kolor. But I know there is a PPG and Dupont with in a reasonable distance that can match. Do any of you people have recomendations on brands or particular lines with in a brand that works well?

People and "real neon benders" ( even on here) said we were wasting our time fixing beer signs. Now we have a reputation for fixing old beer signs among the collectors and that is leading to other neon work ontop of the wholesale and window signs we already have. Our neon guy swore a few years ago that neon would die out by now and yet today he was talking about how he still busy and for now and it will die out in a few years. That was from a conversation we had with a another sign guy that went to the last show in Orlando and said he saw new LED products that look great for window signs. But I have a feeling that a year or two after those hit the streets and single LEDs burn out people will go back to neon again.

Isn't this fraud? If you lied about savings and costs to secure the contract by deception that has to be illegal.