On Jan 24, 2022, at 10:27 PM, Gary Oliver via
cctech <cctech at classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
As to the real reason I was doing
this: Most of my tapes are un-boxed and have suffered being in a dusty area (before I got
them) with the dust forming a sort of 'crust' on the outside of the tape.
It's only on the first wrap or so, but it's enough that it keeps those handy vinyl
cohesive tapes from sticking. For that reason, I was trying to find something to clean of
this dusty gunk so the vinyl strip would hold the tape into a spooled condition. It was
the side-effect of this effort that lead me to the discovery if this "removable
layer" on the DECtape.
BTW, does anyone know of a source for these vinyl strips. My old ones are 10 mil blue
very-flexible vinyl without any adhesive. They rely only on the cohesive properties of
vinyl-to-a-non-porous surface. I tried using some of the 'dry vinyl' sheets from
Cricut (the plastic decal printer company.) They have a couple of colors without adhesive
that they call "window cling" but they aree only 4 mills thick and a bit flimsy,
though so-far they are holding ok.
There's a children's toy I remember:
shapes cut from vinyl, intended to be stuck to windows to make pictures. That seems to be
the same stuff.