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- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Hillsboro at Ev'rglo Neon and no, it's not Christmastime and yes, you are looking at Santa Claus, but he's a perfect example of what neon can look like.

And now this blue motorcycle that you're looking at is another original creation of Ev'rglo Neon.

And there's an interesting story behind Santa here that we're gonna tell, but Jeff Dunn, you've been doing neon for what, a couple of decades, I guess.

And you're in this shop in Hillsboro and it's fascinating because you've got signs in here from all over the state.

They're gonna be repaired.

- Yes.

- You've got original creations like this, and what I want to show our viewers during this half hour is what it takes to create this and to fix the neon signs and what goes into neon because it's a mystery to a lot of people.

- Yeah, and there's a lot of steps involved in it from designing the pattern and selecting what size glass and colors you're gonna use, and then designing the electrical layout of it too, on how the electricity is gonna flow through the sign, that all has to be taken into account.

And you bend the glass and when that's done, you fill up with gas and paint it and then try to put it, get it put together without breaking it.

You break a lot of stuff.

A whole lot of stuff gets broken.

- There's so much that goes into this.

I love the Santa Claus story though because what you did was you created this for the Christmas light program here in Hillsboro to be auctioned off so that they could afford the Christmas light program and doggone it, it worked, didn't it?

- Yeah, they raised about between 15 and $1,600 raffling off Santa here and local attorney Barbara Adams won it and she still had it, so I was like, "Could I borrow this so we can take a quick look at it?"

'Cause it is really a good example of what can be done with neon and he's made out of 14 different colors, 14 different types of glass to create him.

- There are a limited number of colors too, aren't there, with neon?

- Well, there's about 60 that that are available that you can come up with, but some of them are quite difficult to come by.

- While we're here, I just wanna direct the camera over here because this gives an example of the sort of projects that come in here.

You can see that neon, it's got some staying power, but glass breaks, you know, and things happen and they need to be replaced.

So you've got a lot, you got your work cut out for you, don't you?

- [Jeff] Yeah and it's been a little tricky getting some parts during COVID, but we've got two Ford tractor neon signs and they quit making tractors right after World War II ended so these are quite old.

We've got a 1939 Budweiser sign.

- [Mark] That's the green one?

- [Jeff] Yeah, from before when they changed their logo to red, so this is about a 2000, or late 1990s Budweiser sign.

And then we have one here from like 1939 and it was made in St. Louis by Federal Brilliant, so that's a local sign and so is this one, VAT Pilsener Beer, which is Pride of St. Louis.

And then up here we've got a Meadow Gold Ice Cream neon sign that was brought in for repair.

(Mark laughing) And this is super fragile 'cause back then, this was probably from the 1950s, they didn't have plexiglass and for some reason they didn't mount it on a metal frame, so the whole thing is glass.

This does work, so he wants it painted out and then mounted on plexiglass so they can just hang it on the wall and plug it in 'cause it's unbelievably fragile in the state it's currently in.

- Okay, so during this program, you're gonna show us how you design, first you gotta design it, then you gotta choose the glass, and then you have bend the glass, right?

- Yes.

- And then you color the glass?

- On some things I do color my own glass.

- And then you add the gas and then is that pretty much done?

- After that, you have to paint out the sections of the tubing that you're not supposed to see and then you can assemble it.

- And then plug it in and it should work.

(Mark laughing) - There's a lot of steps and it's all done by hand.

- Yeah, truly, thank you.

Okay Jeff, some patterns are more intricate than others.

I asked for a simple one so that we could get a good look at how this has done, but what you're gonna do is you see, this is part of the beer sign and you've got some of the glass bent, it's already out there in front and you've worked with some of the angles and some of the bends there that you've already done, so what I'm gonna ask you to do is show us a real kind of a simple procedure, like an a 90 for the letter B or something like that, this is how you bend the glass.

- So we have to blow in the tube because when you do bend it, the wall tends to collapse, So you just need a little puff of air to puff it back out to the right angle.

And there's several torches available so you can use this.

There's also a 10 point crossfire.

- [Mark] And this is a natural gas torch.

- [Jeff] Yeah and it's mixing one part gas with 10 parts air and that gives you about as hot of flame you can get having to use oxygen.

- [Mark] Do you ever overheat the glass?

- [Jeff] Not really.

- [Mark] And you eyeballed it 90 degrees.

- You put it on here and hope that it matches and do next couple marks of where I'm gonna do my next bends at.

Then I usually, it depends on what type of thing I'm doing, but it's safest if you rotate through the glass, then you don't have a chance to pick up a hot piece of glass by accident and ended up getting burned 'cause that's pretty big issue.

'Cause there's been times in the past where I, once I picked up a circle that I had just done and burned like six fingers.

- Oh man, that puts you out of commission for a while.

- It does so you gotta be real careful not to not to pick up something that's hot.

- Identify what you burn.

- [Jeff] So I'll do a 180 degree bend here.

And on this, the outer side of the bend needs to be heated up higher 'cause it's gonna have to be formed.

So the inside needs to be a little bit cooler and the outside of the bend needs to be a little bit warmer.

- [Mark] And you learn this through making mistakes, don't ya?

(Mark laughing) - [Jeff] Yeah, a lot.

It really took about five years to really get good.

- [Mark] Wow.

That's neat.

Yeah, and there she is, that's the top of the R, yeah.

- So the next one, we'll bring it down to this level.

And so you just kind of rotate through these.

The word beer here has four, basically four pieces of glass that I'll work on on it.

- Okay, Jeff, so you bending white glass, or I call it white glass, or it's clear glass or white glass, I'm not sure.

Other things are available and companies make colored glass if you don't wanna color your own glass.

- There is colored glass available from Italy and we can kind of see that down here where the glass is more or less like stained glass, whereas most of the glass it's made in the United States is clear and then it has a powder coating on the inside of it, so we kind of take a look at, these are some of the standard colors.

You've got a whole bunch of different shades of white up here on top and the whites generally go from like a bluish white to a brownish white at this end.

So there's probably at least 20 different sheets of white available on the market.

But this shows 60 different colors that are available from Techolux out of Italy.

And then- - If you go this route, it's more expensive though, isn't it, to buy colored glass?

- Yeah, it probably adds, you know, it probably triples the cost of the sign to use colored glass and a lot of the colors are pretty much impossible to get now, other than like a ruby red, novial gold.

- Because of COVID?

- It's not so much that, they've just cut back on what they stock and what they manufacture here and what's available in the United States, and a lot of the really unusual colors aren't available at all, so I've kind of learned how to coat those myself.

And we can look at here.

This is like pre-World War II ruby red glass and they call it oxblood ruby because it's such a dark color and it's really got like a jewel-like appearance when it's lit up.

So it's really, it's just a stunning shade of red.

- And you can't buy that anymore.

- You can still get ruby red, but it's not that dark, almost a black-like appearance, so it's really unusual.

And another one that's from before World War II that I kinda inherited is, it's uranium glass and they quit making this right around World War II 'cause they found better uses for uranium, but they left me about a hundred sticks of this, and it's really an eerie shade.

We can take a look at a little sample of it later, but it's really an eerie shade of green when it's lit up.

But there's a lot of signs from that era, so I've repaired several signs for people and where you might need just like a four inch or a six inch piece to fix somebody's tube for them, so having that is really, you know, it's really a great thing.

- [Mark] Jeff, some of these tubes are tiny, tiny, and some of them really, I mean, they're real tubes, you know, you could blow through 'em.

- Yeah, so whenever you make neon, like if you're gonna do a two inch tall letter, you might use some eight millimeter glass.

If it's something that's big, that's outdoors, you may use like a 15 millimeter glass.

And so there's a bunch of different sizes so like the window signs you see out around, those are generally made out of like nine, 10, 12 millimeter, sometimes 13.

So there's a bunch of different sizes.

But the problem with that is that if you need green glass, you've got to have a 25 pound case of each one of those colors on hand.

So for some of the standard colors that you use a lot of, it's worth having those cases around.

But if you want to do like artwork where you need a small piece of like, you know, coral rose or something, I've kind of learned how to coat the tubing myself, so I'll kind of demonstrate how that's done.

- [Mark] Okay.

- So this is different and it's the way that they coated tubes back in the 1930s in the United States.

And the neon bender will go ahead and completely bend the tube, and then when that's done, we'll take some glass beads and just a few drops of binder and then pour the beads into the tube and then you have to sit here and shake them through tube until you're satisfied that the entire length of the tube has a coating of binder in it.

- [Mark] And the binder will be kind of like a glue that will make it stick to the glass.

- [Jeff] Yeah, it's just slightly sticky.

And so once that's done, these beads are poured out and you pour a phosphor in, and I've got a bunch of different colors that I use.

This one is blue.

And so just like a quarter teaspoon of this is probably enough to do about 100 foot of tubing, so I mean, there's just a barely a dusting inside.

So once you've poured the phosphorus through and you get a nice, even coat, you can see here that this has a coating of blue on the inside of it that I've done.

So we can take this over.

- [Mark] And what are you attaching?

- [Jeff] To a power supply to turn it on.

- [Mark] Wow.

(Mark laughing) Oh, that's beautiful.

- Yeah.

So, I can fill about, I think 16 colors on my own now and I'm probably gonna add a few more later this year, but I originally envisioned using the, you know, to do these just for the special colors that you can't afford to buy, you know, an entire case of some strange color.

But now I'm finding that I'm doing some of the whites 'cause there's kind of a bright white that's kind of a bluish white, it's kind of hard to get ahold of, and then a warmer white that's used a lot.

- [Mark] So what is the substance called that you're buying that- - [Jeff] It's phosphor.

- [Mark] It's phosphor.

- [Jeff] Yeah, and a lot of them originally were made from minerals like willemite and scheelite were green and blue, but now there's synthetic alternatives available to those.

So the powder coating's actually non-toxic.

- [Mark] And it takes very little of it too, doesn't it?

- So it's just a really, just a minute, thin powder coating, but each color has a different consistency so some of them are more difficult to pour through the tubes than other colors are.

So it's taken a lot of notes and four years of just practice and messing around with it to get to the point where I can really coat tubes and they look beautiful, as good as a factory tube would look and it eliminates my inventory.

So all I have to do is stock clear glass and once the tube's made, if I wanna make a pink, I could pour paint powder in it.

If I wanna make a green, pour green powder.

- [Mark] What about the lasting?

Does it last as long as it's colored through?

- Uh-huh.

Yeah, so it's, I tested them, I've got some that have burned over a year now, but I try to test them for basically a thousand hours.

So once they hit that thousand hour mark, if the tube's still looks good and it's bright and hasn't stained or anything, then it's good to go.

So I'm actually pretty happy that I've done this 'cause I had to have several people on Facebook who I was friends with that have me on shops outside the United States and then they kind of worked me through all the details on how to go about coating all this stuff myself.

- Now, Jeff, when we saw that blue light, the phosphor blue light, there was some prep work that had to go in before that because you had to prepare the glass to accept the argon, which made that color blue.

- Yes.

- And this is how you do that, right?

You've got glass here that hasn't been prepared in any way.

- Yeah, this has not been prepared.

So what I'm getting ready to do is splice on the second electrode and the electrode is what introduces the electricity.

It's got the wires for the ends of the tubes.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and splice a second electrode onto this tube.

- [Mark] Is that natural gas?

- [Jeff] Mm-hmm.

With 10 pulsar so it gives you a lot hotter flame.

- [Mark] So what you've just done is you've got all the air out of that.

- Well, I had to blow in it to puff it back out 'cause it kind of collapsed whenever you bend it or splice, and so right now it just has atmospheric air in it so we just don't want it to break so it's up off the thing.

So the next step from here would be to actually fill the tube with gas, so that'll be the next step once this cools down a little bit.

- And you use two kinds of gas, argon or neon.

- And neon, and so we're gonna be using neon in this tube.

And this is some pre-World War II red glass we're just using as an example here so I splice on an electrode to both ends.

- And you choose neon for this because of the color of the glass?

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Jeff] 'Cause neon is primarily used for red, pink and orange, and argon tubes are all the rest of the rainbow, are done with argon.

- Okay, so once this cools off, what are you gonna do next?

- We'll fill it up, we'll take it over here and vacuum the air out of it and we'll also sterilize the inside of it and process it and get as much of the air out as we can, and then we'll fill it with just a tiny bit of neon, and then we'll hook it up to the electricity and see what it looks like.

- Okay.

Okay, Jeff, what's next?

- We're gonna splice this tube we just made onto the manifold where we'll remove any air and impurities that are in it by heating it up.

And then after a few minutes, all the air will be removed out of it and we'll add just a little bit of neon to it to make it a red tube.

(machine humming) - [Mark] You have all manner of torches, don't you?

- Mm-hmm.

And these are actually two different types of glass.

The electrode.

- [Mark] And you're sterilizing it.

- [Jeff] All I'm doing is just splicing it together right now.

- [Mark] Oh, okay.

- And then again, puffing, a little puff of air to blow it out to make sure that it's, to make sure that it's got an even, you know, that it's not crimp shot.

So the next step here, there's all sorts of like fancy temperature gauges and stuff, but I still use newspaper.

That's what they've been using 'cause it'll burn at about 425 degrees.

So once it hits that, you know tube has gotten hot enough.

And I also have a little temperature thing here that you can kind of rub on it and make sure that it's up to the right temperature.

- So when this goes aflame, we know it's hot enough.

- Yeah, it'll just basically char is what it'll do.

And so once it reaches that temperature, then we just wait a few minutes for the air to get vacuumed out then we can add some neon gas to it.

So let me come over here, turn these a few times to make sure that they're not gonna leak.

'Cause these valves have to be taken apart and cleaned on a regular basis.

Okay, I need to go over to here.

Now we won't want to touch those 'cause it is a really high voltage.

So now I just opened the main stop and we're starting to remove some of the air from the tube.

And now we've- - [Mark] (laughing) Look at that.

Wow.

- [Jeff] Don't touch it.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Jeff] So we're just gonna- - [Mark] Is neon going in now?

- [Jeff] No, once he remove a little bit of air, the tube will conduct electricity, so right now we're just getting the tube hot and now we're gonna try to get it even hotter quicker.

(tube humming) - [Mark] Wow.

- [Jeff] So this is about 20,000 volts that's running through the tube.

And you can see the ends are starting to get red hot.

- [Mark] Yes.

- [Jeff] And the newspaper's beginning to char.

- [Mark] Yep, the newspaper's smokin'.

- [Jeff] So that's about it, now we- - [Mark] So you just sterilized it, right?

- [Jeff] Mm-hmm.

- [Mark] Okay.

- And so all of the impurities that were in the glass have now been released because of the heat and now the vacuum pump is removing them from the tube, so they're getting sucked through here, down into the pump.

So we now it's just a matter of waiting and hoping that piece of glasses is fairly good.

- I think that glass changed colors, it went to black.

- It really does, even the yellow, at first it turns orange then it turns like almost a brown color.

- [Mark] But when you put neon in there, it will go back to red again.

- Yeah, once it cools down, it'll turn back to red.

- I'll be darn.

That is fascinating.

Okay, Jeff, that tube is cooled now.

What's the next step?

- Okay, the next step is we're gonna fill it with gas, so we're gonna fill it to a pressure of about 12 millimeters of mercury with neon, so I close off of the vacuum valve and then we watch this and we wanna go up to about, right at 12 millimeters.

- [Mark] Now that's not neon.

- Yeah, this is neon.

- That is neon, okay.

- Now, the tube has neon in it, so now we're gonna flash it and it looks like it's good.

So the next step is to disconnect these and then seal this off.

Okay.

- [Mark] You have to seal both ends?

- [Jeff] One.

- [Mark] Just the one, okay.

- [Jeff] And then we can take it over here and hook it up to the power supply and see how it looks.

It usually it takes a few minutes for it to get completely age in 'cause there's a little bit of impurities and the little bit of impurities that are still in the tube will get reabsorbed into the metal ends, but it's looking pretty good right now.

- It'll be a darker color than that when it's ready for use.

- Yeah, it gets a little bit darker once it burns in fully, but that's pretty much the final color right there.

- [Mark] That's neat.

And this is the World War II era.

- [Jeff] Pre-World War II era red tubing.

- [Mark] Wow.

- [Jeff] But you can see there's a little bit of clear glass here, so that's kind of what the neon looks like, and then the red tubing is acting like a colored filter to make it a darker shade of red, but it's really a beautiful color.

- [Mark] It is.

- [Jeff] It's a shame they don't make it anymore.

- Really is.

Jeff, we were talking about the two gasses that you use, argon and neon.

- Yes.

- They're kind of the same except different colors.

- Yeah, they're both gasses and generally I get them in tanks, but occasionally as a backup, I have glass flasks and this is what the argon looks like.

It's got a blue discharge.

(tube buzzing) - [Mark] You outta keep that on for us.

It's kind of purple-ish too, isn't it?

- Yeah.

So that's what color argon is.

And so this is neon here and it's got that characteristic red neon glow.

(tube buzzing) - So you know if you use neon, you're always gonna get a reddish tent to it no matter really what your color of glass.

You're always gonna get a reddish.

- Yeah, it's either red, pink or orange typically are the only three colors.

And that red is really, I mean, it used to be used in airports because the foggier it was and poorer the weather conditions, it was still extremely visible, so they've always used it like for things like that for beacons and stuff.

- And the containers they come in are these two, I'm not sure, that.

- Yeah, typically it comes in a 25 liter tank.

- [Mark] And that's the argon, right?

- Mm-hmm, and the back one is neon.

And there's really only about enough in there to fill maybe eight, I mean, eight balloons, but if you're gonna fill the on tubes with 'em, you're looking at like thousands of tubes that it'll fill compared to, but it's really just enough gas to fill about eight like balloons.

- So neon tubes are really economical as far as that fuel goes.

- [Jeff] Yeah, there's not a whole lot of gas in 'em so just a little bit goes a long way.

So this, possibly, you know, 70 tubes off just what's in this, which isn't much, and it's just at our atmospheric pressure so it's not like under pressure.

- Fascinating, thank you.

- Yeah, thank you for coming.

- This is a mystifying combination of science and art and if you're like me, you'll never look at a neon sign the same way again.

With another Illinois Story, in Hillsboro, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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