On May 2, 12:21*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 5/2/2009 1:47 AM spake thus:

If you're interested in trying it, you can send the tape to where
I
work and I'll personally run it through the dehydrator. Reply
directly
to my email if interested. I think Mark Z may be right about
stuff on
the guides but in addition, I've seen a lot of sticky /
chattering
tapes that have all been recovered with the bake. Further
contamination with lubricants that may react with the tape
coatings
seems much more dicey to me - probably because I'm not a chemist.
BTW,
not all the sticky tapes leave goop on the guides though _many
do_.

All this talk about baking tapes makes me wonder: isn't there a
danger
that the sticky goop will glue two layers of tape together? Or does
the
baking de-goopify the stuff, making it adhere to the tape?

I believe it works, based on all the empirical evidence given here,
but
it's a puzzle exactly *how* it works.

It seems the binders absorb moisture and when you drag the tape
through the guides, some binder and oxide comes off the tape and
sticks to the guides. This of course raises the friction a LOT and the
tape will literally stick to the guides. The worst 2" quad video tape
I saw would play 1 second - 15 inches - before it stalled. That was
not enough time to achieve servo lock. That tape played fine after a
bake. The thing about baking is it can be done again later if needed
but my opinion is to get the material on to another format so you
never have to handle the original again.

G²