- 1). Place a fiberglass mat on the table you will use as your workspace. Use a grease pencil to mark the outline of the shape you wish to make. If you were going to make the letter "A" for example, you would draw two parallel lines as wide as the glass tubing where the tube would sit while you are working on it. Mark the first spot that you want to bend with small grease pencil marks. The first bend will be at least 7 inches from the end so that you have a section of glass cool enough to handle.
- 2). Get a 5-foot piece of surgical tubing that fits over the end of the glass. Make sure you add a mouthpiece so that the tubing does not collapse when you blow into it. A hollow pen tube will do the trick if it is placed in the surgical tubing tightly. Hold the pen in your mouth and hook up the other end of the surgical tubing to the glass tubing. Constantly blow into the tubing to keep the internal temperature of the glass cooler than the outside so that the tubing does not collapse when it is bent.
- 3). Strap your handheld propane torch to your workbench using zip ties on the cooler parts of the torch (like the canister). Turn on your propane blow torch and immediately light the gas coming out of it. Adjust the flame so that the propane burns evenly. Get your glass tubing and hold it with one hand on either side. Slowly and gently heat the glass in the flame, continuously turning it so that both sides heat evenly. Remember to keep blowing in the tubing as the glass heats up.
- 4). When the grease pencil marks burn off, the glass is hot enough to bend carefully. Do not wait very long after the mark has burned off to do this. Take your work back to the fiberglass to check the glass tubing against the pattern you traced earlier. If needed, make small adjustments while the glass is still hot. Use a wooden block to flatten the work against the table or to manipulate the glass as necessary. Keep blowing air through the tube the entire time. Repeatedly heat and bend the tubing until you get the shape that you desire.
- 5). Apply the tubing that you were blowing through to the neon tank by taking off the pen tube and slipping it over the opening to the tank. Take the two 3-inch sections of coat hanger and bend them in half so that their shapes resemble pointy horse shoes. These hangers will later serve as electrodes. Make sure that the electrodes are sanded clean of any varnish or other coating.
- 6). Place one of these electrodes over the end of one of the tubes. Insert it so that it does not go very far into the glass that contains the main artwork. Melt the glass down around the electrode to form a seal. Heat and pinch the hot glass at the end around the electrode but do not close the end off completely. Stretch the glass past the hanger to make it easy to close off later. Remove the surgical tubing on the other side of the glass sign and do the same thing before replacing the tubing, once the glass has cooled.
- 7). Use a grease pencil to place marks on the glass tube 3 inches away from the end. Do the same thing to the other end, but do not attach surgical tubing. Cut the zip ties that keep the torch held to the bench.
- 8). Turn the neon gas on slowly until you can feel the gas come out the end of the tube. Let the air and other contaminants flush out of the tubing. Let the air and moisture flush out of the tubing. Heat up the tubing. Turn off the gas. Immediately melt and pinch shut the open end of the tubing. When the tubing cools, lift and turn the glass sideways so that the glass with the tubing attached to it faces straight up to keep the heavy gas from spilling out. Unplug the surgical tubing. Work quickly to plug the tubing at the end with a piece of cork.
- 9). Make sure the corked end is sticking out. Heat the end of the glass between the cork and the coat hanger electrode. Keep the heat away from the wire. Twist the cork end off when it is heated up enough that the grease pencil mark burns off the glass.
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