Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion Great Texaco sign help!

Ok guys heres one for you. Here is a picture of an old texaco sign I bought years ago. It was in a fire, and damaged, and this is only one side of the sign. Those little holes in the sign hold small pieces of molded glass "buttons" that stick through the metal, and are held in place by what appears to be wire wrapped around the shaft.

I would like to try to restore this sign, but don't have a clue as to where to get the glass buttons made. Where or who can you point me to that might be able to help me? It was suggested to mold them out of plexiglass. I don't have a lot of patience for a project like that, nor do I have the skill. Here is a photo of a similar sign when completed. As you can see, it's a killer sign.


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Don "oltoydoc" Sherwood

Don, I just thought of something that might work. You could machine them out of LUCITE tm , then color or paint with tranlucent paint. Not a real difficult job on a turret lathe and worth setting up for that amount of pieces, the real pain will be polishing them after and painting them. I think they should cost about 1.00 each plus material to machine them..............dodogas

Don, I have made glass beads before which is not rocket science. It would depend on the size/diameter of the pieces, but I would think they could be done fairly easily. Do the pieces appear to be rivet shaped? Even if the pieces were poured into a metal depression, they could be tumbled which would bring back a nice bright shiny surface.

Another way to do it would be to cast resin into a rubber mold which would give you exact colors and all. When you get back up here to Oregon, perhaps I could help set you up.

Al Kozeliski

Koz, if I read it right he mentioned it had a snap ring type groove which would mean a 2 pce mold, which is still pretty easy to make, you could use aluminum for a mold.(if using resin or plastic) When he originally brought it up a few months ago I was thinking of the old highway sign type cats-eyes which i think were threaded, the snap ring or annular groove (to use proper name) is much cheaper to produce and would hold them in nicely. I assume that the face goes on a can or enclsure and it is backlit. Perfect job for a turret, the CNC lathe guys usually dont look at a small run that size.........DODO

Heres something you might try , being your down south were theres a lot of small shops , in the tourist trap areas a glass blower might be able to blow them a serton size ,you could use silicone to put them in ,how about that .