While many people see neon tubes every day, what makes them work is a complete mystery to most.

The neon tube is made out of 3-4' straight sticks of hollow glass sold by sign suppliers to neon shops worldwide who hand produce them into individual custom designed and manufactured lamps. Manufacturing is a cottage industry and an eclectic art, in most cases, often a small family business.

All neon tubes are hand made and labor intensive, even today, and the shop equipment is normally custom assembled from scratch by the craftsmen themselves from parts.

There are many dozens of colors available. The color is chosen by the type of tubing used, and the gas filling.

A section of the glass is heated until it is malleable; then it is bent into shape and aligned to a pattern containing the graphics or lettering that the final product will ultimately conform to. This is where the real art of neon comes in that takes some artisans from a year up to several years of practice to master. A tube bender corks off the hollow tube before heating and holds a latex rubber blow hose at the other end, through which he gently presses a small amount of air in order to keep the tube diameter constant as it is bending.

It is the wide range of colors and the ability to make a tube that can last for years if not decades without replacement, that makes this an art. If it were not possible to make a tube that when well processed had the longevity that neon has, lasting up to a decade or more, there would be very little economic viability in a tube that requires so much custom labor.