A ‘sexy’ neon shop that makes iconic New Orleans signs is closing. But it’s not the end.

In a cluttered corner of his New Orleans studio, Nate Sheaffer pulled a glass tube through blue flames, coaxing it with gentle puffs from a blow hose until it curled into cursive letters.

Four mounted deer heads stared down from the wall above, their antlers draped with glass tubing, beside a glowing red neon sign that read: “Every damn day.” For 41 years, Sheaffer has practiced glass blowing with that kind of devotion.

His right arm is canvassed in tattoos of signs he has commissioned over the years — a smiling skull in a top hat, a cardinal, the trademark figure “Reddy Kilowat” — while his left is covered in burn scars.

“There are parts of my fingers that don’t feel anything anymore,” he said on a recent Friday afternoon.

Sheaffer opened his studio, Big Sexy Neon, on Oretha Castle Ha