One job lead to the others..
In 1972, a good customer was in a car crash.... totaled her 1955 small window VW. She just loved that bug, because it had a radio that was "HERS" as she drove to and from UCLA and then to work. She asked the wrecking yard if they could take the radio out for her to have... so the guy cut it out with a blow torch...
I had a shop clean it up and carefully slice off the bulk of the back and put the face and dash piece in a deep shadowbox.
Several years later at a shop in the Los Altos hill$$$$$ area, a guy brings in a white mouse that was stuffed.
"This was my favorite pet as a child and I want him enshrined. I also heard that you could frame ANYTHING."
I looked at him and said something insane like $1,500 and it will be a Greek Revival shrine; hoping to scare him off. There was just something I wasn't getting about this guy and he had his right hand all bandaged up... and was holding it up like it was pretty new damage.....
Figuring drugs or just that I would get stuck with the job... I quickly said 'Cash, up front'.
Fine, I'll be right back.... 30 minutes = $1,600. "I don't want you to run short."
A month later he picked up and loved his little mouse on a Ionic pedistal in the Greek parthenon with a window in the top to light the mouse.
His bandage was off, and his small finger was missing.
He flipped down the accident photos of his Porche parked around a snow stake that had split the car to just past the gear shift-stick.... where his hand had been as he down shifted his 917a. One of 6 all aluminum bodied 911Ss.
He had it finish sliced in half and cleaned up, and was now ready for me to tell him how I was going to frame it....to be hung in his 10 car garage. Three months, $26,000, 1,450lbs of steel I-beams embedded in the walls and ceiling of the garage. One large sealed shadowbox, vacume system and electronics.... he got his wish and threw a party.
When any of the doors were opened, the head-light came on and shown through a 2' porthole, and the radio came on playing his favorite San Francisco station.
Now I think I'll leave the big shadowboxes to Jim Miller.....
[oh, and before anyone asks... I don't remember if we used any silicone or not....
]