Rigby Neon Inc. Committed to quality

About Us:

We are a third generation neon manufacturing company. If I were to make an analogy about people who bend neon it would probably be like playing golf. Some people pick it up pretty quickly, some take much longer, and some never really become good at it no matter how long they try.

People have often said to me over the years that they know a neon guy that has been bending glass for 30 or 40 years, to which I would always say " that's great, is he any good"? Because like golf, Ive seen people who have been bending glass for many years and they get by ok, but they weren't taught correctly from the start so consiquently they aren't very good at it.

If you were to come to me and ask me to teach you how to bend glass (glass bender or glass blower are the correct terms for what we do) one of the first things I would have you do is draw a series of pictures. The reason for this would be for me to determine whether or not you have any artistic ability. Even drawing something as simple as a small house will tell me a lot about how artisticly inclined you are.

Making neon has a lot to do with maintaining straight lines, shaping perfect angles, and creating radius's. If you draw me a house that you think looks great, and I can see that all the lines and angles of the drawing are off, this will tell me that you may be a decent glass bender some day but you will probably never be able to creat your own designs. Everything you ever bend will have to be designed by someone else who has the ability to create a proper drawing because a neon bender works directly off a drawing, or "pattern" and if the drawing is off, the neon will be off.

So being able to look at something that someone wants made out of neon requires the abitity to take whatever they are showing you, or trying to explain to you, and turn it into a neon pattern that a bender can work off of. If you can't do that, you will need to find someone who can do it for you. Or what if a customer says "just create something really cool for me to put on a wall in my home". This might be very difficult for the glass bender that has trouble drawing a basic house? Some glass benders have never made a neon pattern in their lives. They simply bend what is set in front of them. And that can be fine, people like that are necessary in many situations but this would be the difference between a glass bender and a "neon expert".

At Rigby Neon we like to consider ourselves "neon artists". A glass bender can be great at making signs out of neon, but a neon artist has the ability to design and create anything out of neon.

Picture from Customer

Finished Product

Need more information?

Please contact us at 586.427.6366. We are ready to create neon designs you may have thought were never possible.