Rocco

A customer of mine called me earlier asking if I'd go to Boston to do some work. I'm too busy, and much too far away, plus don't have any MA licensing. TBH, we didn't get into details but all of their other work has been electrical signs in malls. PM me if you work in Boston and I'll pass along the contact info. Thanks!

If you need enough to make it worth the travel time, Joseph Fazzio in Glassboro has it listed in both perforated (round holes) and expanded (diamond shape holes). Even Grainger has it listed (both ways) on their site but IDK about their pricing compared to others.

My daughter had an appointment and had to go to a regional office.. She texted this photo. I guess they bought the letters online but didn't spend the $ for a pattern. Or pins or good tape or a tape measure or level or... And this isn't some tiny doctors office in the middle of nowhere. CH probably has half a billion bucks in buildings alone. SIGH.

OMG, gerber font cards. That brings me back. I actually still have a 4B that runs though it's not aligned properly and lives under a table. A couple of years ago, a belt broke (only the 2nd or 3rd thing in a zillion years) and I just couldn't line it up right. If I had a swivel blade for it I could still cut vinyl with the beastie. I've moved on to a larger plotter so that belt breaking was a happy accident. It forced me to move into the 21st century. Though if you ask my kids I'm still stuck in the 1800's. I admit to never being a great artist though I always start with pencil/paper. I'll probably never win any design prizes but can at least do a rough draft with a customer.

I'm going to avoid the comments above but throw in my two cents (which may be all my post is worth but..). Way back in the dark ages when signs were still hand painted, a company called Gerber Scientific came out with the first good vinyl plotter. And yes, there may have been others, but this was the first one that (at least in my area) saw large sales. The local sign writers bemoaned the fact that now any "monkey with two fingers" (a phrase I heard more than once) could now lay out and make signs. Other phrases like "its ruining the industry", "taking away jobs", etc. flew about. I wonder if the first mass produced brushes got the same kind of comments? We used to make wholesale channel letters (all by hand) and after I saw the Gerber 4-B at other shops, I tricked (long story) my father into buying one. it cost $10K (in 1982 dollars) when that was a tidy sum. it came with a whopping seven fonts. It saved us a lot of time, allowed us to stop hand cutting/reverse spraying faces, making letter patterns, etc. I was just learning to hand letter at the time, but that was left on the wayside. I still wish I had fully learned to hand letter but i digress. Anyway, channel letter benders are just another tool. In the hands of an experienced shop they can really be a money maker. Digital printers are another similar item. If you know how to use them (and market that service) you can make a lot of dough. In the 21st century channel letters, digital prints, aluminum extrusions, etc. are all commodities. You can buy an assemble-it / install-it yourself set of channel letters on-line from at least one source. I wonder when Amazon or Walmart will start carrying channel letters, cabinet signs, etc. Now, anyone with deep enough pockets can gain entry to the sign business, be it with electric signs, vinyl graphics, 3d carved signs, etc. by buying the right equipment AND hiring the right people. TBH, isn't that the new business model in these times. If you have enough $, you can get into most any business. Put together a business plan, get a loan, assemble a team, rent appropriate space, buy "stuff" and run with it. It will never be as easy as the franchise salespeople would make you believe, but people will try and some will succeed. Now I'm putting on my helmet, body armor and hunkering down in my foxhole and try to avoid the shrapnel.

Hi all. Has anyone ever dealt with these folks before? A PM who used to work at North American and also another who worked at Ruggles contacted me about working for this company. Both were really good to deal with at their former companies. However, the PM's don't sign the checks, no matter how nice the working relationship might be. So, any experience good or bad? Thanks! Rocco

At least your lines are straight. Even I can't always read my early AM scribbles.

Nice, A while back I missed out on getting a full set of Signs of the Times from start to ~1990 and have been kicking myself ever since. My favorite part was Justin Green's "Sign Game" monthly cartoon. Hmm, maybe not cartoon. Comic? Illustration? Anyway I have a box around here somewhere with years worth of those cut from the magazines. I looked forward to it each month.

I've found that with the internet age, many folds don't want to actually talk to people. Fear perhaps? Also, with the almighty CORPORATION ruling the world now, no one wants to not have a paper trail in case of problem. I've had PM's refuse to answer questions over the phone but send out yet another copy of the drawings, when I'm calling to question something on the drawings. CYA is the new golden rule. I do agree your comment about the mass e-mailing. We regularly get these from MC signs about a "potential service opportunity" and if you don't respond within 1.25 seconds, it;s already been assigned. For the "4 x 8 sign with 27 black letters" they are getting used to going online and getting prices for everything and anything. And now just about everything is a commodity.

Thanks for the replies all. I didn't get this one and am not sure to be sad/happy. No $ from that job, but no sore hands from drilling. I've used diamond hole saws, spear point glass/tile bits/etc. Those bits from granite city tool look interesting and I'll have to give them a try.

Hi all, As usual with spring weather comes the flood of quote requests. One floated in this morning and it's a Kay store on that bleeping porcelain floor tile they use on the walls. We know how to drill it but it's a ROYAL pain. We use "arrow" point glass/tile bits supplied by the customer. They work but does anyone got a better method? IIRC, on the last of these it took three guys two full days to drill the tile and install the signs. That was back in '15 so maybe I'm remembering wrong but still it was a long bit of drilling into really hard tile. There were two main signs, one plaque and two of their tagline signs, all on that blasted tile. IDK how many bits we went through. i recently did some FCO letters on granite for another client, and the arrow head glass/tile bits worked much much better than the bits i had purchased, which were specifically made for granite. HELP!

Depending on the exact configuration they aren't really that hard to make. Got a Photo? A good vice and a monkey wrench are all you really need. I used to make them all the time. Where are you located? Also, I just checked and Glantz has three different ones on their site. IDK if they will be a stock item or not.

As usual, I'm late to the party. Better late than never, or something like that. Terrific article. Eric, can I print this out and provide it to customers who are considering an LED conversion? I can't tell you the number of times I've been called to repair a sign and been asked about an LED conversion. I've even had a store owner tell me to get with the times because I told him to just replace the florescent lamps. I would ask permission to change the material cost numbers (say adding the same XX% markup on all items) because I charge customers more than $1.19 for a socket. Most shops around here (metro Philly area) change $5-6 (or more) for a pair of sockets. Again, thanks for a very thoughtfully written article.

I'm quite close to me but haven't been going for the past bunch of years. It's always in the middle of my busy season but this year I'm going to clear my schedule and head down - I hope.

I'll agree with the above. unless you cut less than 50 yards of vinyl a year a cheap plotter is a waste of time/effort. as usual buy a good tool (plotter, truck, drill, etc) and it will last and pay for itself. buy a cheap tool and you get what you pay for. My first plotter, a Gerber 4-B, lasted 30+ years. It cost $10K when we bought it way back when (with six whole fonts BTW) but until I upgraded a relatively short while ago it was still a workhorse. If it was to be a backup plotter then maybe its worth the price, but I think as a whole that we American's are bargain hunting ourselves out of jobs by buying too many cheap Asian imports. However that's a rant for another time/place.

"Thank God for LED Lighting and all the suppliers who sell to everyone. No skill, No knowledge. Just great bullshit to sell signs." I knew a tube bender (now deceased) who used to complain about all the suppliers selling transformers, GTO, etc to folks who didn't know anything and were driving down the neon market plus giving it a bad name. When I was a teenager my father used to complain about people selling lit box signs for half of what they should have been. His friend, the sign writer, complained about people with "a pickup and brush" who were selling painted signs for pennies on the dollar, and whose work faded in a year or two. There will always be folks who start off low on their pricing and can only go down from there. This looks to be one of the worst led signs I've seen but I don't expect it to get better. How it could be worse IDK, but someone will lower the bar even further. BTW, that crushed conduit is a doozie. to reduce, re-use and recycle is one thing but...

And the latest version is, please price the following list of sign types. You get about a dozen versions of signs for a customer, with no other info. Is it in a mall, is it in the middle of downtown, 150' up, 5' up, is it a concrete wall, EIFS, etc. You call and ask for info and they say, we're trying to sell this project to a potential client and just need some "budget" numbers based on "average" conditions. Oh, and can I include what the average permit cost would be and lead time? I think from now on I think that I'll send this kind of client a quote for "estimating advice" before even looking at those things.

I like the "$4 million dollars..." and will borrow that!

Thanks Sean, Due to the spring rush and family "stuff" I haven't been on here in a while. The local guy I found hasn't given me a return call yet, so I'll try them in the morning. Its not a huge job, just a few pieces to be bent.

Hi all, If you know of anyone in the general Philly area that has a 12 foot wide hydraulic press brake, please let me know. I have a customer who wants a 132" wide C channel (plus some other things) made from .125 aluminum. Thanks Rocco Abco Signs 856-663-6001 Pennsauken NJ

I think its a case of people finally getting tired of just "holding on" and their banks getting tougher on financing. Plus with the internet & direct mail we hear about all sorts of auctions that in times past wouldn't have been known to us. For example, we regularly get notices about equipment auctions all the way out in CA and I'm in NJ. Also, the "by order of bank" could mean most anything. The Bank of My Wife is ordering me to sell off my other toys if I want to buy a boat.

In a similar vein, I once had to go back to service a sign about six months after installing it and found my missing cordless drill on the raceway. Oops! After removing the wall sign from an "exotic dance studio" we found a hidden room that hadn't been opened in decades. There was nothing much in it other than some old Saltwater Sportsman magazines.

I was working at the Sands casino in Bethlehem PA. We were required to park all trucks in the large vehicle area, where buses, RV's etc get put. I parked my bucket truck and was walking in when I noticed this sitting in the lot.

Ignoring the LED issue, at least it appears that this community isn't as anti-sign as a lot of other places. Maybe the tide is turning away from many places hating signs, be they lit with neon or otherwise. "Charlene Roise, president of Hess Roise architectural consultants, said neon was once commonplace in the Twin Cities and other urban areas when it was the most effective way to draw attention to your business. Today, even as LED takes over, there’s a growing interest in the legacy and craft of neon. Roise said that a neon museum recently opened in Las Vegas, paying homage to what was once a ubiquitous feature of the urban landscape. “It’s really important to stop the losses and fix them up so we have them around,” she said. “As we’re aware at this time of year, there is a lot of darkness — they can really take the chill out of a Minnesota night.”

I guess I need to take a rid up the turnpike. We got 6 cents a pound for transformers and 8 or 9 cents for ballasts on my last run just before xmas. I had about 40-45 transformers and was disappointed when my son got back from the scrap yard.