Posted by Mike Jackson on July 17, 2002
A customer specified a Pratt and Lambert color for the red on the lettering on his sign, so Darla picked it up at the paint store when she was out. I was curious what "Scarlet O'Hara Red" looked like so I opened the can. Ugly, of course.
I am always getting on Darla's case about leaving the lids off cans of paint, or not pressing the lid down securely, so I put the can on the floor to press the lid down firmly. Somehow, I missed the center and turned the whole can over. I hate that!
I remember doing something very similar in a beauty shop within the first few years of my business. Red, of course, all over the carpet at the front of the shop, under the main window. I used quite a few gallons of thinner and paper towels, but apparently I got it up well enough to get paid, and without replacing the carpet. I suspect it still smelled for days, though.
My Grandfather used to help me coat out panels at my sign shop in Oklahoma. One time, we had to paint out about 30 4x8 panels with lemon yellow, so I had a 5 gallon bucket of it mixed up. After the first coat, my Grandfather was putting the white plastic lid on the plastic container. The lid must not have been perfectly set on the container and when he pressed his foot down, the lid flipped and his foot went down into the paint. He limped, hopped, and skipped over to the dumpster when he took off the shoe and put it inside. I don't think Grandma was too happy about it, but she did laugh at the thought of the scene. The next day, we dug the shoe out of the dumpster and it was a beautifully finished "patent leather" yellow. I asked him if he wanted me to dip his other shoe in the paint so he would have a matching pair for Sunday services.
Mike
Mike Languein
Dan Sawatzky - White Goes a Long Way!Paint Spills
One fine day in the Navy, during a duty weekend and gale force winds, a buddy of mine and I were ordered to paint the king post. In the wind, up high. Good idea. I was content just to fiddle around and stall all day, municipal employee fashion, until it got dark, because I won’t go up high, but Rick climbed up there with a gallon of Haze Grey, and just as he got to a starting place the wind took the whole can away from him -- also at the exact same time as the two Military Masterminds who ordered the job came walking around the corner and got their uniforms ruined. Ha ha. Such good Karma is rare.
At L.A. Trade Tech Mr. Earnest had to wear a suit and tie. He wasn’t really supposed to get down in the mud with us and play, being the respected leader. We had two guys in the class who were perennial screw-ups, couldn’t do anything right. One day Ray went charging out the door holding a full, open quart of Bright Red (of course) and had a head-on collision with Ernie coming in the door. Soaked every piece of clothing Ernie had on, and none of it got on Ray...
We had a bucket in the paint mixing room where we dumped all the sludge. For some reason it was at the edge of a middle shelf. Toward the end of each semester the bucket was just about at the overflow mark. One of the gals in the class was reaching for something on a lower shelf when Pete The Plumber came to make a deposit in the bucket and knocked the whole thing upside down on her head. Then, I must admit, he did the one good thing in his life; he dragged her straight to the nurse’s office and got her fixed up.
We had mostly Dana paints in the class. We also had one quart of One Shot Lettering White to last us all semester so we were instructed NOT to use it for making panels. I, of course, intended to do that very thing; paint a large grey panel using the One Shot and as soon as I opened it I dropped it upside down on the floor. It fell EXACTLY upside down and didn’t spill a drop, but I couldn’t touch it without losing the whole quart. I had to do some sort of magic act before Ernie caught me -- I think I was able to save about two thirds of it.
One time I was just about broke when I got a job requiring a lot of Medium Orange, and it was in an upscale neighborhood. So, for the first time in twenty years, I sprang for a brand new pair of Levis and a whole quart of One Shot Orange. While opening the quart I spilled the entire contents in my lap, and all over the sidewalk in front of this store. Si Allen tops this one by doing it with shorts on and turps in the paint. Ha. I wore those orange Levis until they couldn’t be worn anymore.
A buddy of mine was doing a small job on a wall, that was up fairly high, and he was doing it off an extension ladder. He had a gallon of Bright Red in one hand and leaning out to catch the last bit of the sign when he lost his balance. Later, he said he had nothing else to hang onto so he held the gallon of paint all the way to the sidewalk, which he met head first. When he woke up the now empty can was on his chest and red stuff was everywhere, the cops and paramedics were all around and there was a dead body tape outline around him. He wouldn’t let them take him in the ambulance for fear he’d never see his truck and equipment again, so they wrapped up his head and he drove to the hospital. It took weeks for his concussion to heal.
Lenny bought a new truck once. A Toyota long bed stake with mahogany bed and rails and we were threatened with dire results if any paint ever got onto his beautiful new truck. The first day he put five gallons of white in the bed, with the lid loose, and it tipped over leaving the driveway of the shop. He left a white trail for miles -- which led right to the shop. He had a thing for five gallons of white; once he went to repaint the backboard at a car dealership. In their infinite wisdom they’d had the lot resurfaced and THEN called Lenny to repaint the sign cautioning him not to get any paint on the new blacktop. Have you ever watched Laurel & Hardy or the Three Stooges? Five gallons upside down from the plank to the blacktop.
I worked for a place once that had a mini truck with a utility box on it where they kept all the shop’s paint. One of the guys took the truck out to a job one morning, but he came jogging back later in the afternoon. The truck stalled on the freeway and he couldn’t get all the way over to the shoulder so he left it in the painted island wedge of an onramp, where nobody is supposed to drive. We all piled into another vehicle and went up there to push the truck over to the side, but when we got there there WAS no truck. But there WAS an enormous rainbow of colors splattered from the wedge to the center divider and all down the freeway. Somebody getting on had T-Boned the truck, rolled it over and pushed it all the way to the middle. Every can of paint opened and spilled. When the cops got there they found the mess, two vehicles but only one driver. They picked up the big stuff off the road and left the mystery to the next guys (us) to figure out.
Raymond Chapman - Another Red StoryWhen we were working at West Edmonton Mall I had my tool trailer parked outside the service door to the amusement park. The mall is huge and the door was about a half a block (inside) from where we were actually working. I had drilled a hole in a clamp inside the trailer. I used a five gallon pail of white paint as a workbench. And yes I did accidentally drill a hole in the lid. But it was only a 1/4 inch hole
A while later I sent one of the crew out to the trailer to get the pail of paint. Well, he was a big burley fellow and rather than carry the fiver by the handle like a normal person, he slung it over his shoulder with the lid facing backwards, You guessed it... the world's longest paint spill... all the way through the theme park. You could tell when he stopped to chat with someone... when he had to go around something and so on all through the park.
Janis happened to come in the same entrance just after him and caught up with him just as he reached us. We put the entire crew to work in a mad rush to get it before it dried!
-dan
Mike JacksonThis one didn't happen to me (luckily) but to the man that I was working for while a young sophomore in college. He was lettering a metal cabinet that was perpendicular to the building and left a quart of ....you guessed it ...red on top of a step ladder. He forgot it was up there and went to move the ladder. The quart of red landed squarely on the hood of a brand new WHITE Cadillac! We wiped paint with everything we could find. The owner of the Caddy came out of the store for which we were lettering the sign and almost had a heart attack. It was taken to a body shop and they detailed it out with a new wax job and everything.
It was a great lesson for me. For once I got to learn something from someone else's bad experience.
Jeffrey P. Lang - A quart of Red...Right on the HeadI was out in the garage (shop) this afternoon and noticed two large paint spill spots. One was the Scarlet O'Hara Red from the other day and, of course, the other was One Shot Bright Red. I don't remember the story on that one, but it is a permanent feature of our floor now.
Back in college, my Color Theory professor was telling us about an airport or some public building that had painted large color circles on the floors of the terminal. It was for purely decorative purposes. As it turns out, red is a color that can trick the eye into a feeling of "closer". Warm colors in general do that, while cool color receed. Anyway, he was telling us how they had to take out the red circles on the floor because people were tripping on them. I can attest to that. We had a big red spot in the center of the "painting side" of the old shop in Oklahoma--from another random spill. Quite a few times I found myself adjusting my step when walking over the spot.
Red is a good color if you have kids. They like to lean into it, touch it, and get it all over them. It is even better when you miss a little red on the back side of your hand when cleaning up, and they think you cut your hand....getting a little cheap sympathy if only for a second or two.
Mike Jackson
Raymond Chapman - Another Yellow StoryOne of my first lettering jobs I did was for an old American Oil service station. It had old metal can signs on the front of the building that I was to change for the new owner. I think I was about 17 at the time & was eager to do the job. As I was getting started, I set the opened quart of OneShot bright red on the top of the can sign. I started penciling in my letters with a stabilo, & as I had to "nudge" my ladder a little to the right to finish a letter, down came the can, right on the top of my head. I climbed down the ladder & went inside to get something to clean up the mess and gave the owner a near heart attack as he thought I fell off the ladder & it was blood all over me. I remember the mineral spirits burning my underarms as I cleaned myself up. It must be something about red!
Jeff
Raymond ChapmanWhile I was in college I worked for a sign shop in Abilene, Texas. We were out of town doing a large wall and were packing up to go home. I set a gallon of lemon yellow on the ground, put on the lid, pressed it down with my foot, and put it in the back of the pickup. When we got back to the shop the bed of the truck was lemon yellow, as well as the bumper and the rear of the truck.
When I had pushed down on the lid there was a sharp rock on the ground and it made a nice hole in the bottom of the can. Now almost 40 years later I still check what is under the can before I step on the lid.
I guess one good thing about the sign business today is that you can't spill vinyl.
Mike Jackson - It's Always RedMy first shipment of paint from Gary Anderson (Mr. Rhino) included a gallon of bright red. I sat the case of paint on the table saw to unload them into the paint cabinet. There was a little bit of the cardboard box sticking out over the edge of the table and when I took the next to the last gallon out of the box the weight of the gallon of red tipped over the box and the red landed precisely on the corner and popped of the lid. Of course, the can was upside down with a fresh gallon of red paint oozing out all over the floor. I was able to get a bunch of it back into the can and then strained it to get out the sawdust and other garbage from the floor.
After the red dried I took a piece of chalk and drew one of those crime scene "bodies" on the floor.
Mike, I think your Grandfather's foot in the bucket is the best story yet.
Dan Sawatzky - Red Paint Spills BestMurphy's law comes into play here. Seems like we all use a lot of black, but for some reason, RED is the one that always spills. Of course, it is one of the worst to clean up and it stains just about everything. I guess it could be worse, knowing that Thalo Blue and Thalo Green have deep staining capabilities.
Steven Parrish used to spend about an hour of his dog and pony show putting down a dropcloth before starting a gold leaf job. (canvas cloth and masking tape) I don't think he used a lot of Fire Red on his gold jobs, so maybe he was fending off the demons right up front. Even with that, if he were alive, I bet he would have a story about some job in Kansas, at the bank owned by the nephew of the owner of the grain elevator, next to the railroad station that was almost blown away by the tornado in '67 that he spilled a large can of screen ink. (Raymond Chapman and anyone that ever heard Steven tell a story will be laughing)
I still get a chuckle of the picture in my mind watching my Grandpa limp across the parking lot with yellow paint dripping on the concrete all the way to the dumpster. He used to have a saying about having to throw his "hat in the door" on occasions where we stayed out too long fishing. If the hat came flying back out the door, it meant that Grandma was not happy and maybe he should stay outside a little longer. I am sure my Grandma was laughing under her breath when she was hearing why he only had one shoe on when he came home that afternoon.
Mike Jackson
Janet BaloghThe red spills best. I remember a time I was doing a mural in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. It was a big wall and I had a sixty foot boom rig to do it. I had rigged up a plank across the basket to hold all my paint. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Sonya was the BOSS lady and she was there real regular to 'supervise' my progress (with the backing of her large committee) And I LOVE committees.
Well about the third day (when I was real near the top still) she came to the mural and was trying to give me instructions about the best way to do the mural. I had the area under me roped off but she always ducked under the ropes to make sure I could hear her detailed instructions. And wouldn't you know it, a gallon of red paint picked that very moment to slip from the rig...
Luckily the can didn't hit her but I can't say the same for the paint. Falling from 50 feet a bucket of red paint EXPLODES when it hits the ground even with the lid securely fastened. She wasn't too thrilled with the result but I was able to finish the rest of the mural in relative peace!
-dan
Mike Jackson - Yellow Goes a Long Way TooWearing a relatively new pair of my favourite sneakers (K-Swiss), I decided to do a wee bit of touch up on a sign.
Took the lid off a quart of paint and set it too close to the edge of the table where it jumped off and landed, face down of course, ... right on my nice bright white shoe! Right smack in the middle too, over laces and everything. Gunk! I had just shook the can real well. Bummer!!!
Any attempt at clean up was not successful.
Ah yes .... it was indeed bright red one shot.
Rick SacksDan,...good one! I can almost visualize it.
I can't remember if it was Monte Jumper or Ellis Doughty that told me a story at one of the Letterheads meetings, but when I heard it, I believed it to be true. Whichever it was told me he was finished on a job for the day and the crew was beginning their trip home. They were in one of those flat bed ladder trucks with all their paint safely stored in an milk crate fastened on the back of the truck. He said that as they were gaining speed to enter the highway, they hit an unusually big pothole or frost heave. As he looked back in the mirror, the gallon of yellow bulletin enamel was just lifting out and over the edges of the box and out into the highway entrance. The can exploded as it hit the highway, just like Dan mentioned above. As any civic minded driver would do, they pressed the pedal a little harder and got out of there as quick as possible. The next evening, they headed home again from the same job site and could see yellow car tracks swerving randomly all over the highway.
Okay, it is not a red paint story, but close enough! It should have been red.
Mike Jackson
Cam Bortz - Blue TooI was doing a window in a new salon. That morning they put in the new carpeting and linoleum at the entry with this gold moulding where the two met.I did a magenta outline and filled it with quick size and gilded the verigated leaf. As I was doing the teal outline the can spilled from the window sill. Real similar story as Mike's. After many cleanings with solvents and soaps, the waterless hand cleaner finally did the trick. I did need to clean a far larger area than where the spill was, most of the room in fact, because the cleaner did change the color of the carpet some.
Vance GalliherWhile working in Phoenix in 1987 I was sent to do price changes on a liquor store bulletin next to the Black Canyon Freeway, near Camelback Road.
The Freeway is in a "cut" there, fifteen feet below the surface streets, so the sign was at almost ground level for us, next to a low barricade and the straight drop to the freeway surface.
My helper that day was "Foolish Frank", an older signpainter with a stunning talent for disaster, who we hired on occasion when it was too busy.
Anyway, on this job we had a plank across saw horses, about three feet high, to reach the top of the bulletin board. Frank was on the side near the hiway.
I had just finished and was cleaning brushes, with a full open quart of Chromatic 152 blue bulletin on my end of the plank. A couple of fire trucks went by on the freeway, and Frank just had to go look, and took two steps to his right on the plank...and past the sawhorse beneath him.
He went down, the plank turned into a catapult, and I turned in time to watch that quart of blue sail in a perfect arc, windmilling paint like a blue pinwheel, until it landed on the far side of the freeway. How it didn't go through a windshield is a miracle.
Frank fell three feet and rolled, managing to miss being hit by the now-falling plank. I started grabbing the rest of our stuff and getting it onto the truck - I wanted to be out of there before the first car with blue all over it could get off the freeway and come looking.
Frank was a little dazed - moreso than usual - but I got him into the truck and tore outta there before the n hit the propellor, so to speak.
hahahahaha.....that's funny about your grandpa mike!!.....save from having them "bronzed"......vance
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads