aemitchell
New Member
My father taught me a valuable lesson that I've used all my life. He told me, "If you don't know how to do something, hire someone who does, watch how he does it and you'll know how to do it the next time." Now I can tear apart and rebuild my large format Roland Soljet printer/cutter and I can build really cool computers.
I was first introduced to photography by my parents in the 60's and sign manufacturing in high school (1972). Back then we hand cut all our letters out of wood, arranged them on our layout table. Then we took a large sheet of acrylic or Lexan and heated it in a booth with a torpedo heater until it was pliable. Next we laid it on top of our wood lettering and turned on the vacuum built into the table to suck the heated acrylic till it was vacuum formed and cooled. We hand painted the reverse to give it color. I do not miss those days! This is also when I learned to how to make silk screens using AB positive photo transparencies.
When I finished teaching early childhood Ed. in public and private school I was hired by a sign and graphics Co. (Redwood Graphics) out of Texas, to travel the USA by RV and design sandblasted redwood maps for adult RV parks. It was great! The RV parks let me stay for free until the designs were done then I would move onto the next park. My company only needed hand sketched layouts, but I wanted a challenge so I bought software and taught myself how to use the computer.
While traveling through the Florida Keys for Redwood Graphics, I met and married my wife. When we couldn't get a sign shop to respond to our request to letter our friend's new office we bought the sign shop.
Nine years later we own the largest sign shop in the Keys. My wife had a distinct advantage when it came to mastering our software...she read all the manuals! We specialize in boat lettering and custom yacht club burgees, but we do every kind of sign manufacturing our customer’s request.
We enjoy our work because every day is different. My wife says making signs is like crafts class every day. I love it because it lets me learn new skills in graphic design software and photography.
The down side to the sign business: Every day is we work long hard hours to fill last minute orders. We constantly feel stressed like we have a college project that is past due. We gross alot of money, but our overhead is so high that our accountant says our income is below poverty.
The advantage to this business: Our sign shop pays ALL our bills. My wife is always making me buy new fancy tools, computer software and she even makes me build really fast liquid chilled solid state computers so we can have lots of tax write offs. We get to meet the nicest customers and a lot of them we call friends!
I was first introduced to photography by my parents in the 60's and sign manufacturing in high school (1972). Back then we hand cut all our letters out of wood, arranged them on our layout table. Then we took a large sheet of acrylic or Lexan and heated it in a booth with a torpedo heater until it was pliable. Next we laid it on top of our wood lettering and turned on the vacuum built into the table to suck the heated acrylic till it was vacuum formed and cooled. We hand painted the reverse to give it color. I do not miss those days! This is also when I learned to how to make silk screens using AB positive photo transparencies.
When I finished teaching early childhood Ed. in public and private school I was hired by a sign and graphics Co. (Redwood Graphics) out of Texas, to travel the USA by RV and design sandblasted redwood maps for adult RV parks. It was great! The RV parks let me stay for free until the designs were done then I would move onto the next park. My company only needed hand sketched layouts, but I wanted a challenge so I bought software and taught myself how to use the computer.
While traveling through the Florida Keys for Redwood Graphics, I met and married my wife. When we couldn't get a sign shop to respond to our request to letter our friend's new office we bought the sign shop.
Nine years later we own the largest sign shop in the Keys. My wife had a distinct advantage when it came to mastering our software...she read all the manuals! We specialize in boat lettering and custom yacht club burgees, but we do every kind of sign manufacturing our customer’s request.
We enjoy our work because every day is different. My wife says making signs is like crafts class every day. I love it because it lets me learn new skills in graphic design software and photography.
The down side to the sign business: Every day is we work long hard hours to fill last minute orders. We constantly feel stressed like we have a college project that is past due. We gross alot of money, but our overhead is so high that our accountant says our income is below poverty.
The advantage to this business: Our sign shop pays ALL our bills. My wife is always making me buy new fancy tools, computer software and she even makes me build really fast liquid chilled solid state computers so we can have lots of tax write offs. We get to meet the nicest customers and a lot of them we call friends!
