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Standing inside YESCO sign company's Natomas warehouse, Jinbo Xia heated a four-foot long glass tube in an open flame called a ribbon fire. He kept the empty tube from imploding by blowing air through a thin hose running from his mouth to one end of the tube.

Xia gently rushed the tube to a work table and began bending the material before the glass cooled. Working with both hands and mouth, he used a disappearing craft to form the "C" in the Crest Theatre's landmark neon sign. He later added electrodes and "bombarded" or filled the letter with red neon gas that would turn the powder-coated glass tube pink.

The 39-year-old learned the art of making neon light units from his father, who owned a neon sign shop in their village of Jishi, China. Xia's father had learned the skill from early neon light makers in Shanghai. Xia came to this country to use that skill.

Today, many sign companies have begun offering more and more LED signs, which are cheaper and more energy efficient than neon. Few people still making neon lights in Sacramento can match Xia's knowledge and talent.

"I've been doing this for 23 years and he's one of the best I've ever seen," said Sean Ward, the company's service sales representative on the project, as he watched Xia work. "If it's done right, this tube can last for 50 years. If it's done wrong, it won't last a week.

Making and rebuilding neon signs is YESCO's expertise. The founder of the Salt Lake City-based company changed the face of Las Vegas after bringing neon to this country from the World's Fair in France. YESCO is believed to be the largest privately owned sign company in the world, said YESCO Division Service Manager Mark Ager.

The company was chosen to restore the art deco sign as part of a $360,000 renovation to be completed shortly before the Crest celebrates its 60th anniversary in October.

Inside, worn-out seats will be repaired and curtains at the main entrance will be replaced. A boiler that's been heating the main theater since Crest opened Oct. 6, 1949, will be replaced with a more efficient heater, said the theater's Office Manager Laura Coulter.

The Crest site's importance to Sacramento's theater culture dates back before the opening of the theater. The Empress Theatre offered live vaudeville with seating for about 1,800 after opening at the site at 1013 K St. in 1913, said Gerry (pronounced "Gary") Watt, the Crest's projectionist and technician and a former Tower Theatre manager.

The Hippodrome, which replaced the Empress, brought popular vaudeville performers to the city before converting into a movie theater in the late 1920s. The aging Hippodrome's marquee fell off the building and killed someone on the ground in the late 1940s. The Hippodrome was gutted and the Crest built within its walls.

Once, K Street Mall was a movie-house mecca filled with huge, independent theaters. The Crest is one of the few Sacramento movie palaces that survived being demolished or divided up into mini-theaters in the 1970s, Watt said.

"It's a very vibrant, vital part of the Sacramento arts scene," he said. "A lot of the theaters I loved as a kid are gone or converted into other spaces. A lot of cities don't even have theaters intact from that era. So we're very lucky."

The Crest's sign was first restored in 1992 as part of a $1 million theater renovation. The current marquee restoration is expected to cost about $213,000 and be completed by mid-August. For more than a month, Xia, Ward, Ager and five other YESCO staffers have been working to restore the roughly 90-foot "colossal marquee" as close to the original as possible.

Some in the city weren't ready for that in 1992. At that time, the marquee's and sign's colors were changed to primarily pastels, Ward said. This time, the blade sign made of sturdy Midwestern steel will be returned to its original bright colors.

Workers pulled down all the existing neon. A total of 42 broken or burned-out units will be repaired or replaced by Xia. The blade -- consisting of sections known as the tower, the leaves and the candy cane -- was sanded and prepped. The blade is being repainted, and work on the marquee with its reader board is following.

Working from the top down, crews have already started reattaching the neon lights that were in good shape. YESCO workers have appreciated working on the landmark, Ager said.

"That sign is an icon for downtown. We're taking a piece of Sacramento history and restoring it to like-new," he said. "Once we restore it, that sign will probably outlast me."