Florida Plastics Projects

Venue and special events furnishings are a specialty requiring an expert.
I am not that expert!

But, I act as a plastic fabrication vendor for people like
AllenF@topnotchproduction.com.
They service a viable niche, mostly here in South Florida.
The back-lighted furnishings color change in a soothing way.


large dice pedestals
I did some of the work pictured here, in the prop size dice cubes.

commercial lighted table

large glowing table

round back lighted table

A sheet metal artist and his wife purchased only the black bases, from me.
They have a successful business selling selling various metal painted, sort of deco looking sculptures and accessories.
Not much to say about my work here, but the nautilus type design, is very fresh.
The trophy market has a glut of overworked shapes, and seemed like everything has been done.
Besides, all shapes are variants of a pure form.
It is nice to see some truly new designs are
made by people who take time to innovate.

At only a few inches tall these cases are a cut and dry job.
It's the object mounting that takes some thought.
I've seen some clear plastic ones, metal, and everything in between.
Not being of that faith, I don't exactly understand the purpose, but they are collected or hung on doors, as a space blessing artifact.
I think some have internal contents, of a granular nature.
That's how little I know about it, but please don't email about that.
This client has a very large collection in his home.

Commonly requested for desk surface protection and to position important phone numbers underneath. This one was 3/16" acrylic sheet. That is a excellent gauge choice. Not too thick or thin. The edges are rounded over, or bull nosed to go easy on your forearms. The sheet yield was not too great on these. The customer preferred it be seamless, but that would have driven the cost up. This job used two sheets, was about 2 hours labor, and was priced at $150.

From a distance, the desk could pass as clear resin coated.
(except for seams)

It's go time butter bean.
When the manager at a local Bally's gym asked for a clear dumbbell,
I was very happy to take on the non labor aspects of that project.
I really enjoy product design, it is like therapy.
Too fragile for a real work out, they are a display item.
About 14" long with 1.25" clear acrylic sheet disks.

Here I go with another not for profit, mindless self indulgence object.
These little grass modules are only $1.50 at the Whole Foods Market, so frequent replacement is not a hardship.
They seem to last about a month before the grass turns yellow, and has to be replaced.
Not a very practical thing, just a novelty. And not really intended as a greenhouse for consumable greens, just a unique houseplant.

We supplied the material for another vendors Las Vegas project.
It is 3/4" 3030 green "jade" tinted acrylic sheet.
Then the plastic material was computer routed.
The engraved awards trade, and furniture manufacturers sometimes uses this
plastic sheet color, because it resembles real glass edge color.
Many layers are needed to acheive these 4 foot high acrylic statutes.

Polycarbonate sheet prices are a little higher than acrylic materials, or the "hybrids", but the durability is the uttermost in clear plastic flat goods. Still most of the bagel bin size units, like below are made of acrylic. I think the visual properties of acrylic are very slightly better. When dealing with food, all aspects of the closeup presentation is very critical. The medium size "bagel bins" in production here are not available in a molded form yet. lnjection molding of precision parts like the supermarket candy bins with a manual shoot metering system, are much less expensive than the hand made ones, but custom products cost.

Daily use, commercial products have to be cleaned and moved, so durability is a big factor. The lexan bins, glue and bend with the same basic processes, but definitely are more difficult to make.

One of many varied works by Randy Rich, the 3 layer hawk carving is about 16" high.
No, these are not embedments or machine made.
Randy carves them by eye, and hand, one at a time.
It is a process called intaglio. (internal carving)
You may see him at local art shows, or may contact him at carvermon@earthlink.net.
I do the acrylic edge polishing for this skilled artist, so he can focus on what he does,
like no one else.

A retro, used furniture guy has another project for me. To reuse the yellow acrylic sheet that has been painted black, to save the budget. Orbital sand and buff, you know by looking at the pictures. Nothing technical, just labor stuff.

Really, gluing the glass bubble mirrors and breaking down the frame was the most time consuming part. Remember, this wall hanging unit has been around for decades. The masonite fiberboard backing was real fragile from years of moisture. His refurbish cost would have been about $250 for new, but is only $120 for this resurface and reuse job. Even then, I could tell he was hesitant to invest in it, not knowing if it would return a profit. I have to respect these used furniture flippers, they really do work and hustle.

Bigger is not always better. 14 inches was too high for this tabletop sign. 10 or 12 inches would have given it more importance, in my opinion. But, that is how you learn.
1.25" thick clear bullet resistant acrylic sheet was used, for a stable base.

When I saw my neighbors website gateway page image, it was all go for something appropriate. Money did not matter, it was made to satisfy my lightweight design habit. I hardly knew the gallery owners, and they probably thought I was crazy, but I will settle for "eccentric".

Again, this logo image was taken off the internet and cleaned up and vectorized for the vinyl lettering process. It is amazing what good software filters can do. A lot of sign people charge $80 to make a rough raster image to vector format. But I have watched several people who did it a few minutes with "slider" software buttons, and by eye. Fixbadart.com will do for a very reasonable fee, and it will be "clean as a wistle". They will email you back in about 3 days with an .EPS and an adobe acrobat file.

Requested by a salesman for trade show displays. He needed the compact nesting feature, for frequent travel.
Contructed of 1/2" acrylic sheets, they are about 5" high. It is quite a heavy stack, but less thickness, would have been a slight compromise. Of course they had to be leakproof. I am a one man shop in a tiny warehouse, but I always have a new, orignal content project for this bi weekly blog.

A customer's way to construct and protect the raw polygal
(corrugated plastic sheet) edges during installation.

Also known as co-extruded UV-protected cellular polycarbonate sheets, or double wall polycarbonate. A triple wall sheet is available, but not used that often. The inside gap is 5/8" and the length of these profiles are 96". More utility than appearance, the edges were machined rounded over, not my usual high polish. No one is claiming high wind resistance by using this clear profile, just a way of finishing off the ends of plastic sheets with an interib gap. They knew exactly what they wanted and didn't consider using a thicker midrib strip, instead of 5/8". My feeling is code rules will allow a 3/16" gap of the installed clear corrugated panels.

The granite slab in the picture is outdoors of my shop. I use it as a gluing table, since it is flat. Luckily, I salvaged it out of a nearby alley. Reusing is even better than recycling.

Yes, the plastics canes I sell on ebay and clearcanes are heavier and more fragile, but these material limitations are mostly understood. In 3 years I have received very few complaints. When a cane breaks and they reorder, it has never been an unpleasant conversation. "My clear twist broke unexpectedly, I would like to order another."

The walking canes are disability industry standard materials and thickness, that have been used for that purpose for many decades. Sometimes I think they know more about these plastic canes than I do. They often purchase more than one type and color to add to their collection. The next month cane sales triple, with holiday gifts to grandma. The wood or metalic/aluminum canes are lighter, stronger, and sometimes less expensive but the appearance of these sticks are what makes them a product they believe in. With this sort of history, it doesn't matter if I believe in the product or not.

Well, floor stand, that is.
This picture came from my first clear floor mic stand customer.
He was the one who convinced me to develop the product, since I already had something similar with a walking canes site. It took about 5 emails from him, explaining the need and showing me the pictures of the band Garbage before I caved. I had made the stands many years ago, but they were a lot thinner rods, and were not made for the rock world. That is some of his art work in the backround. Artists are used to having their ideas meet resistance, and just keep plugging away at you. Other products like my defence canes developed that way, with a single customer, asking you to add it to your line. I am glad I did it with the stands. About 25 stands sold in the last year, with no complaints or reports of breakage. I leave the comunication door open, with every stand sale, telling them I need the feedback to improve the item.

One look at these two "C" shaped 1.5" thick clear acrylic desk sides, and it is known, they come from the classic fine acrylic furniture company from the heyday of that theme.
This blog archive has two other entries about that high end acrylic furniture company.
It'a all about me and Lion in Frost Inc.- continued.
It's pure coincidence that a neighbor with a retro warehouse four doors down, asked me to "clean up" these desk sides. The unit was in good shape and I only charged straight time, $50 for the pair.
Normally if you put your hands to a $1000 -$2000 object, just the risk involved warrents a high repair price.
A piece could fall off the table and be destroyed. I don't like to think about those things. But again, that was an exceptionally low quote because the only scratches were on the part that the floor scuffed. And I don't have insurance for jobs that bomb. Let's just say, close neighbors get a great cost quote.

Originally the desks had a glass mirror top, or black acrylic top, sometimes with a mini tv embedded in it. In the 70's those tiny televisions were the uttermost in cool. Two other plasticsjournal entries tell the boring story of my years at Lion in Frost as shop forman. These deep and thick acrylic sheets took a lot of help to get into the mold after heating. The springiness required about 3 men leaning on it to push it down. As always one side of the desk has the rough looking "Lion in Frost" signature.

Yes, I was the one to hatch this idea.
And they bought it for restaurant theme decor.
It is not capable of securely housing an actual live bird, but a stuffed one will do.
The bent half inch rod is 3 feet high, with ostrich eggs, and a holiday door wreath.
The hanging lamp chain also has the wiring for the optional halogen at the base
that "pipes" the light to all parts of the rods.
The opposite ends of the rods are especially bright.
And the cheezy oversize, homemade swing is self explanatory.

Local church pastors are glad to find me. They save the internet boxing and oversize freight charges.
All but the smallest knock down, screws showing units are too large to ship ups.
Honestly the boxing is as time consuming as the clear acrylic construction.
Since I don't stock these but make each one "custom", they can specify moderate size changes.
This 30" wide top is pretty big by internet standards. But a big guy with big arms, wants to grab the sides and look at ease. Plus the double wide book thing, you know, more real estate. Kind of like dual monitor, media rooms geeks. The highest part of this lecturn, is 48", a standard height.

Quite the snazzy puppy shop, I must say. Large and somewhat fragile at 1/4", these are just to display the animals temporarily. The customers come up with the creative concepts, you just need to do the work. I don't think they will be removed that often from the baby cribs. The shop owner has built plexiglass aquariums before, but felt his time was better spent doing what he does best. Because of budget 1/4" material was chosen over 3/8" thick acrylic sheet. Wilton Manors, Florida has a large community where practical, small dogs are in favor.


The "blue" you see is the film masking to protect the sheets.

Simple but effective housing for the little critters out of clear acrylic sheets.
Roughly 10" x 10" x 14" with clear plastic "catch", hasp and hinge.
A California customer requested this first attempt at this sort of design.
He seemed to know exactly what he wanted, that is a big help.
We ended up putting more ventilation holes than what this picture shows.