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early experiences
I had a few interesting experiences while I was working for Let There Be
Neon, a brief stint for six months in 79-80. Very early on ozone became my
worst enemy. We were making "rainbow boxes" (6 units, to form a rainbow in a
metal box with 12 holes and 12 rubber grommets.) In a mater of weeks the
grommets would crack. I discovered this was not from heat but from ozone. A
switch to silicone grommets did the trick. Here's a good one. I was pumping
an Empire State Building clear argon merc. and I ran out of argon. This unit
was all 12mm except for the spire that was 8mm. I used neon merc. instead and
when the piece was hung in the gallery the spire went from red to blue every
minute. Apparently the merc. likes to collect in the larger, hence cooler
sections of the unit. This becomes apparent when we see units in very cold
weather that are bright in the center but dark at the electrodes. The mercury
migrates away from the electrodes that are hotter than the rest of the unit.
(not to be confused with mercury migration due to some solid state power
supplies) As a young inexperienced tube bender some of my experiments lead
to disaster, for example with a gas, air, oxy mix, would it be extra hot if I
just used oxy, gas no air? DON'T TRY THAT WITH YOUR NEON FIRES. It might
work well with torches made for oxy but on my primitive system the lack of
check valves coupled with a oxy. pressure greater than my gas caused the oxy
to back up into the 1 1/2" gas manifold and blow up. Nobody was hurt and
nothing was damaged but every rubber hose blew off with a sound like a
machine gun.Hope you enjoy this, David Ablon