The Rayzist story before
it made the papers.
During 1974 - 1976 after my divorce, I decided to leave my Art Directors job building
Trade Show Exhibits at John Goudie, Associates in Clinton, MD and
start managing our 'on the road' AT&T account, setting up their exhibits coast to
coast. During those three years I attended
over 75 major trade shows from New York to Seattle and Miami to Chicago. A few months after traveling by plane and staying in hotels I decided to purchase an RV and tow my car. Living on the road now was much easier and restful sleeping in ones own bed.
Nearing the end of 1975,
my first year Trade Show travels I stopped in Phoenix to respond to a call from an old sign painter friend Steve.
His Jeremah Steakhouse client needed some menu panels and wondered if I could help.
His client wanted 50, 10 inch by 14" redwood menu paddles with the
same Jeremiah's Steakhouse design blasted into the top of the menu paddle. The large
letters cut into the exterior sign was one thing but to hand cut hundreds of
1/2" letters into wooden paddles would take way too much time. It was
next to impossible and the job would have been way too expensive to produce.
Note: The wooden plaque below was not part of the project, but will give you an idea of what sandblasted redwood looks like.
I asked my friend
to give me a few days to think about it and I headed down to Tucson to visit my Grandmother and family. My
sweet Polish grandmother always welcomed my visits and had plenty of room for
me to park my RV and car trailer.
Grandma also had a large two car garage with plenty of work space and
grandpa's tools for me to setup shop whenever I needed.
Someone has a need.
From my sign
painting background I knew how to silkscreen so I got thinking of how I could
silk screen liquid Latex rubber onto pieces of redwood (the latex rubber would
repel the abrasive and only allow cutting in non latex areas).
I called my Phoenix
friend and got his approval to move forward with the menu paddle test.
The first step was
to cut a sample run of paddles out of 3/4" redwood planks
I then set up a
round, four foot wide T Shirt printing table with a speed dryer. Then painted a
finish layer of dark stain on the flat surface of the redwood (like above
picture) and dried.
Next step was to
make a photo silkscreen with the Steakhouse menu paddle logo and hinge
it to the screen table.
I then created a
mixture of liquid Latex and white paint and silk screened 3 layers (speed
drying each layer) onto the a piece of redwood. I did this test with 3 , 6 and 10 layers. Ten was the best.
1975 a New Graphic Sandblasting
Process was born.
After that project
I wondered if I produced other designs and blasted them into redwood would they
sell? Who would buy them... furniture
stores, gift stores ...?
There wasn't a need for
sandblasted redwood wall hanging plaques. I couldn't sell a single one. No one was interested.
What about designs blasted into other surfaces?
My first sample box of blasted glass, mirror, Formica, wood &
stones.
I made up a few
dozen boxes to take along with me on my travels for AT&T and made stops
along the way anywhere I felt there might be someone interested. Glass
decorators, Stained glass shops, Engravers and Craft shops, there was little
interest in what I had.
Near the end of 1976 passing through Cincinnati,
Ohio I visited the Sterling Cut Glass Company.
They were glass decorators using metal die-cut stencils and were frosting
clients designs onto the glass but not cutting into the glass. Barry Dias
was impressed with the deep cutting in glass but his brother Michael didn't
feel it would be affordable to make a mask for each glass. They used a
single zinc stencil (all letters were stencil looking with bridges to hold the
center of B's, R's, O's) and could lightly frost dozens of glasses before a
replacement stencil was needed. Clients
could not get their exact company logo reproduced. They all had a stencil look.
After three years
on the road for AT&T and over 75 major National trade shows from coast to
coast, I felt it was time to get serious and focus more attention on Rayzist.
In 1977 I headed back
to Tucson and bought a $27,000 cabin on Mt. Lemmon up in the Catalina Mountains.
The cabin even had a workshop with enough room to continue searching for my
Rayzist break through.
My move to Mt
Lemmon soon turned into a real estate project, finding that there was a lack of
Cabin Rentals up on the mountain top. With the money I saved from
AT&T and selling my house in Washington,
DC I had enough to purchase another
cabin which had an adjoining vacant lot. All connecting to the main paved road
in Summerhaven.
Learning how to build cabins was a true experience and I really learned more than I expected. (Sad to say, all my cabins were burned to the ground in the massive 2003 Alpine Fire.
My focus was
building a community of 6 rental units, a small bakery, hot tub and establish
Mt Lemmon Cabin Rentals. My newly acquired AZ Real Estate License also
permitted me to offer other cabins owners my rental or sale services for a
fee. Again it was finding the need and filling it. And five
years flew by. No additional work was
done on Rayzist. All of it was just put
on a shelf...waiting, waiting, would anyone be interested?
It was now mid
summer of 1982 and I received a telegram from Barry Dias of Sterling Cut Glass
asking if I was still working on the Rayzist process? He explained
that his company had a growing need for deeper cut personalized glass and they
were currently using die-cut vinyl stencils that needed to be hand picked for
each design element and each letter. It was now a very labor intensive
process and knew there had to be a better solution. That's when he
remembered my visit from five years earlier and found my box of deep blasted
samples. What I had was now exactly what he needed. It was a
fantastic feeling to have what someone wanted to purchase at last.
I told Berry to send me the
designs of what he needed and a few glasses to show the depth he wanted and I
would get back to him.
Under one of the cabins porch I built a new work
shop as fast as I could to have a work space to finish Rayzist. All the other free space I had was already
turned into 6 rental units.
The video on the
upper left was shot just after I received his samples. I was still silk
screening latex and it would be another 8 months before I started
delivering Rayzist Photomasking to Sterling Cut Glass for his deep cut
sandblasting designs for the 1984 Olympics.
A cool $2,000 order for us.
Production of Rayzist needed more space
than my two car garage plus the garage rented from my neighbor's Darleen and
Eugene Edwards.
The building at the center of this picture was our first Rayzist building. It was 1500sf. It was the size of five 2 car garages. The six grey pickup lockers were not there in 1984.
Ray's story hits the News
By the end of 1988 we grew again and decided to move to Vista Caliornia.
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