Signs of the Times - March 2012 - (Page 52)

SIGN MUSEUM NEWS By Tod Swormstedt Tod Swormstedt is the president/founder of the American Sign Museum (Cincinnati). Our Most Expensive Sign A sign’s purchase price is just a fraction of the cost of displaying it at the museum. One of the top-ten, mosttour is, oftenasked questions during a “What’s your favorite sign?” To this, I usually answer, “Well, it’s kind of like a kid on Christmas morning. The first package he rips open is his favorite, until he tears open the second package, and then that becomes his favorite. Although it would be tough to pin me down to one favorite, I could certainly put together a list of my favorite 20 or so, and that list keeps changing as we acquire new signs.” After the next most-asked question – “What’s your power bill?” – there are a few others like, “What’s your oldest sign?” and “What’s your rarest sign?” What I’ve never been asked is, “What’s your most expensive sign?”, and that’s the subject of this month’s column. Not only will you appreciate some of the costs the museum deals with, but you’ll also witness the creative engineering required to hang some very large signs in a confined space. Our 1963, Speedee McDonald’s sign was purchased in April 2008 for $7,500 from the Huntsville, AL franchisee. There’s a whole different story about how that went down, as reported in my June and July, 2008 columns. Anyway, that $7,500 was only the beginning. We had to take the sign down, which cost the museum another $2,110. And then we had to get it to Cincinnati, which cost an additional $2,385. Total? $11,995. But wait, there’s more. We had to move the sign to the new building, roll it inside in two sections – main panel and arches – and then get ready to install it. Fortunately for us, our “go-to guys,” United-Maier Signs, picked up the sign and transported it to the new building gratis. As I said earlier, we then had to get ready to install it. Here’s the issue: You have 28-ft.-tall ceilings with an 18-ft.-tall sign that needs to stand off the floor by 4 ft. for a total of 22 ft. No problem, right? But you have to slide an 18-ft., 6-in. pipe through the 8-ft.-tall main cabinet of the sign and into the 3 x 3 x 4-ft. footer hole. You can’t use a boom truck because you can’t get one into the building. Even if you could, you couldn’t lift the boom high enough to slide the 18-ft. section of pipe through the 8-ft.-tall sign and into the footer. Enter Dave Werner, welder, self-taught engineer and problem solver. Here’s what we did: First, we rolled and positioned the main cabinet over the 4-ft.-deep footer holes. Then, Dave designed and welded together a special, pipelowering apparatus that slid into the forks of our forklift. He picked up the pipe via a cable attached to a steel rod. (The rod was pushed through the pipe about 2 ft. from the top of the pipe, rigged to a winch.) Next, he positioned the pipe over the sleeve in the sign cabinet. With only 16 in. to spare from the top of the ceiling, he slowly, gingerly lowered the 6-in. pipe through the 8-in.wide sleeve, jiggling and working it down through the sign cabinet and into the footer hole. Then, he welded a square plate into the end of the pipe and anchor bolted it onto the concrete footer at the bottom of the hole. For the second pipe, we repeated the process. Once the pipes were set, concrete was poured around each pipe. After the concrete had cured, the sign’s main cabinet was raised 4 ft. to its final height. Then, Dave lifted the 10-ft.-tall arches with the same winchlike apparatus and lowered them onto the top of the cabinet. Add another $9,500 for a total of $21,495. But wait. There’s still all the neon repair and re-wiring to deal with. Add another $2,000 so far, with a few units still to come, plus the cost of installing the neon. Grand total to date: approximately $23,495. Ladies and gentlemen: Our most expensive sign. n 52 SIGNS OF THE TIMES / MARCH 2012 / www.signweb.com http://www.signweb.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signs of the Times - March 2012

Signs of the Times - March 2012
Contents
ST Update
Technology Update
Vinyl Apps
Strictly Commercial
Lighting Techniques
The Moving Message
Technology Review
Sign Museum News
New Products
The 2012 International Sign Contest
Get Smart
The Value of Signs
Industry News
Advertising Index
Editorially Speaking

Signs of the Times - March 2012