Re: [ARSCLIST] Dehumidifer Oven for 1/4" tape

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi:

If you mean an oven to temporarily fix sticky-shed tapes, there seem to be options from economical 
to astronomical as far as cost. Kind of like studio furniture or monitors, many different price 
points to do essentially the same thing.

I've never had a problem using a simple American Harvest food dehydrator (air oven). I've now done 
over 100 reels this way and even 10" 1-mil Scotch 227 (which seems to get particularly gooey and 
sticky) can be stabilized (I won't say "dried out" because I think it's not the correct term) to 
transfer properly. Note that this is all for 1/4" tapes! I think you need a bigger rig like a 
convection oven or an incubator oven for bigger tapes. Also, if your tape happens to be the lost 
reels from some zillion-selling album, or even your grandfather's last birthday party, you want to 
do all of this with care and hopefully have less-valuable material to learn the craft with.

Note also that I've never received tapes that are sticky-shed, were stored in a flooded basement and 
contain a lost secret code for world peace, etc. What I've handled is standard run of the mill 
sticky-shed tapes that were stored under normal conditions and went sticky because the tape was 
mis-brewed back in the day. For disasters like you see pictured around the web, I'd refer you to 
others on this list who specialize in disaster-recovery services.

One final thing to note -- it's not a Good Thing at all to heat up most tapes. Only do so if you're 
sure the problem you have is to be solved by heat. Sticky-shed can be temporarily mitigated with 
proper heating and cooling cycles (Bill Lund formerly of 3M, who studied this while at 3M, says 
12-14 hours heating and equal cycle cooling back to room temp, then play immediately). If you simply 
have a "wet" tape, especially if it's an old acetate-backed tape, heating will ruin it. So know your 
problems before you look to solutions.

Hope that helps.

-- Tom Fine


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Radlauer" <Dradjazz@xxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 1:26 AM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Dehumidifer Oven for 1/4" tape


Hi all,

I'm looking for recommendations for a good quality Dehumidifying/Heat
Processing oven for use with Magnetic Tape, able to handle up to ten 10" reels at
once. Preferably not over $1k.

Thanks.

Dave Radlauer
wwwJAZZHOT.Bigstep.com


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