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"Of course, you need some materials and equipment," he asserts. "You should have at least a few sheets of wrapping paper, a small quantity of vegetable shortening and cornstarch, a single-edged razor blade, and an inexpensive paint-spray gun. However, an investment of less than $5 should be enough to get you started."

Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Well, maybe that's because all of us haven't managed to pyramid an initial expenditure of $2 into a $1,000-per-month business the way Joe has during the last three years.

"My masking technique was the result of a home workshop project," Wilson recalls. "You see, I built a new crib for my baby daughter and decided to decorate it with a few simple figures. Lacking artistic talent, I thought at first I could make use of cardboard stencils of the type you can buy in most dime stores; but, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the edges of the stenciled figures as smooth and even as I wanted them to be. Then I decided to stencil the designs on masking tape, so that the outlines could be cut from the tape and used as a reverse stencil; but, this time, the results were even worse. In addition to ragged edges, my figures often had ragged centers—due to the fact that the adhesive on the masking tape peeled paint from the surfaces underneath as it was being removed."

AT THIS stage, most craftsmen would have suddenly perceived the advantages of painting a crib a single color—without designs of any type. But Wilson happened to be a proud father, recently discharged from Uncle Sam's Navy and determined to provide his offspring with a crib among cribs.

"After trying to make use of several different types of masking tape," he says, "I decided to work out my own adhesive masking medium, using combinations of oil and glue to hold in place reverse stencils cut from ordinary wrapping paper. Then, after a few experiments, I decided that, if I was going to use an adhesive which wouldn't peel the paint undercoats, I would have to do my painting with a spray gun. So I went to the nearest auto-supply store and bought one of those little $2 gadgets which you can operate with the air pressure in a spare tire."

The spray gun worked all right, but Wilson still had trouble because he didn't have a masking adhesive with precisely the amount of "tackiness" that he required. Then, one evening when he was trying to help his wife in the kitchen, he accidentally spilled some cornstarch in a can of Crisco which was almost empty.

"My first impulse," he confesses, "was to shove the can out of sight and pretend I didn't know what happened. Then I got to thinking: cornstarch can be used in making paste, and vegetable shortening is a good lubricant . . . Maybe my accident had produced the very sort of adhesive I wanted."

Wilson took the "contaminated" Crisco to his workshop, and worked for almost thirty minutes before he realized that his problem was solved.

"It didn't seem like a very remarkable discovery," he continues, "and for several days I was satisfied just to have that crib fixed up the way I wanted it. Then, because we were having some trouble getting our mail delivered to the right box, I decided to fix up a little sign which would serve as a guide for our postman."

WILSON MADE the sign on a twelve-inch strip of wood. First, he coated the wood thoroughly with white enamel. Then, using a newspaper advertisement with distinctive script letters, he traced the letters for his name onto a sheet of wrapping paper, and made cutouts of the traced letters with a razor blade.

Next, he applied a thin coating of his cornstarch-shortening adhesive to both sides of each letter by using a small roller squeegee in a shallow metal tray, and aligned the letters in a satisfactory manner with reference to a straight pencil line which he made with a ruler on the dried front surface of his enameled-wood strip. Then, when all of the letters were in place, he sprayed a coat of black enamel over the masked wood strip and allowed it to dry before removing his paper letters—after which he had a nameplate with white letters on a black background.

Neighbors soon noticed Joe's neat, professional-looking sign; and, of course, they all wanted similar signs for their mailboxes.

"They offered to pay me for the work," Wilson relates, "but I figured they were only trying to be polite. So I made more than twenty nameplates for nothing. Then the owner of a nearby grocery store asked me what I'd charge to repaint a fifteen-foot sign over his front door, and I began to realize that I had stumbled onto a good business proposition."

TO FIND out what a regular sign painter would charge for the work suggested by his grocer, Wilson visited three sign shops and got estimates ranging from $50 to $75. Then he went home and did a bit of figuring for himself.

"I decided I could do the job at a material cost of about $3 for paint, sandpaper, and whatnot," he says, "in about eight hours of spare time. So I told the grocer I would refinish his sign for $30, and he approved my price so fast I believe he thought I was cheating myself."

Joe took the grocer's old sign to his workshop, traced the old letters on velum (a transparent paper used by draftsmen), and used the latter tracings to make wrapping-paper cutouts in the previously-described manner. Then, after sand-papering loose paint areas or rough spots on the old sign, he used a rag soaked in paint thinner to clean dirt particles from the sign and sprayed a coat of red paint over the areas occupied by the old letters.

After his red-letter coating was dry, he applied his cornstarch-shortening adhesive to his wrapping-paper cutouts and masked the sign by placing the cutouts over the vague outlines of the old letters. Then he covered the sign with a light gray background coating.

"Six working hours elapsed from the time I removed the old sign until I finished the job of replacing it over the grocer's door," Wilson asserts, "and my income for that time amounted to more than $5 per hour—more than twice as much money as I previously had earned for any type of work."

HOWEVER, JOE didn't immediately quit his job as an inspector in one of Los Angeles' big airplane factories. He used his $30 to buy a better spray gun (with which he could have finished the grocer's sign in about four hours), and devoted more than a month to spare-time sign work before he was convinced he could earn a good living from a business of his own.

"Since then, I've been very fortunate," Wilson says, "but don't let anybody tell you that it's a cinch to operate any type of business. It's an exacting task—not only because there's no sure way of telling when or where the next job will come from, but because you know that a long siege of idleness or a few mistakes and dissatisfied customers can soon put you in the poorhouse . . . I've worked twice as hard for myself as I ever worked for anybody else, and—well, at times I've wondered whether I wasn't foolish to try making money from a hobby. Then I remember that I wasn't always completely happy when I earned a regular salary, and—all in all—I've got to admit I couldn't be much better off than I am right now."

During the first year of his commercial sign work, Wilson solicited his own jobs—concentrating on firms whose outdoor advertising and window displays had a shabby or weatherbeaten appearance.

"It wasn't too hard to get jobs," he says. "I would simply tell a prospective customer how the appearance of his store could be improved if he would let me refinish an old sign or provide a new display card, and nine times out of ten he would agree with my diagnosis. Of course, I didn't get an order from every prospect; but I did make money from at least twenty-five per cent of my contacts—sometimes because my prices were low, but more often because nobody else had called the customer's attention to the need for new signwork."

WILSON HIRED a salesman to do his soliciting about two years ago, and since then the volume of his business has increased so that he had to move most of his tools and equipment to a business location where he now does all of his work. He pays the salesman a fifteen per cent commission on each new order.

Also, Joe now has a salaried shop assistant—a professional show-card writer, who prepares special designs and makes cutouts or masks from stacks of cardboard and paper by means of a small electric router. The sign writer's work enables Joe to concentrate on masking and finishing operations, so that the total shop output is now considered equivalent to the production of a concern employing four or five commercial artists.

Prior to last Christmas, Wilson thought he had successfully concealed his "mistake" in mixing cornstarch and Crisco from his wife. Then he made the error of boasting about his "secret formula," and learned where he was really wrong when his wife responded: