Updated for 2011, the desktop, standard-sized version of the Signwriters pricing guides. The same information as in the mini Sign Contractors Pricing Guide, the desktop guide includes pricing for artwork, ...
Darek's July 2010 Tech Update Column
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The idea launched on a Friday afternoon, when my school friend Roger and I visited a new construction site. There, a plumber kicked at metal — lead — droplets that lay on the ground and said a scrap yard would pay “considerably” for the bits and pieces. Like all 12-year-olds, we wanted to become rich. He said the S&S scrap metal yard was just across town. We quickly filled our bicycle baskets and pockets with the heavy metal.
To our friends, later, we announced our ingenious scrap metal business. We said we’d be riding new bicycles soon.
This was before the “green” movement, so scrap lead was plentiful. Plumbers sealed drainpipes with lead, and power-company linemen joined wires with lead-based solder. Both groups dripped excesses on the ground.
On Monday, the scrap dealer refused our metal. It held bits of dirt and gravel, he said, but offered that we could clean it by heating the metal globs until they melted and then skim the dirt off the top. He said we could melt lead on an ordinary cooking stove, in any pot.
Fascinated, Roger and I watched the rigid metal transmogrify into silvery fluid. We’d heated it on his mother’s gas range, in an old cooking pot, and, as instructed, we skimmed the dross. Next, we poured the hot liquid into a muffin pan, to both cool and mold it.
-->On Tuesday, we bicycled the heavy muffins to the scrap dealer. He tugged a fat money roll from his pocket and dealt out six, one-dollar bills. Basking in success, we bought Cokes and rode back to the construction site, for more lead.
On Wednesday, we spilled a pot of boiling lead onto the kitchen stove.
On Friday, with a clunky lawnmower and two rakes, we announced our new, lawn-care service.
Perseverance.
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