Tape Drive & Tape Archival questions...

A couple of ideas, one for belts (which I have used), the other for rollers (which I might try soon if nobody tells me it doesn't work). For belts, RS components sell (or sold?) a make-your-own O-ring kit. You got verious diameters of rubber 'cord' and a jig to cut it square and glue the ends together with some kind of isocyano acrylic hydrocopolymerising adhesive. The catalogue and instructions said that this kit could make drive belts for 'light mechancial duty', which seems to cover tape recorders. I made a drive belt for my N1500 VCR using it, works fine (although it's not used that much, sure). For rollers, there are companies who sell a 2-pack product that cures to form a synthetic rubber (yes, I know that's a contradiction in terms, but you know what I mean). Devcon is the one I've come across. It's not cheap, but it does say it can be used to make rollers. You'd haev to make a mould (a reasonably easy bit of machine shop work in most cases, I think). The problem is that you're _supposd_ to use the whole tin of stuff at once. Firstly that's more than you'd need to make one roller, and secondly, you are likely to need several attempts when starting out (and at \pounds 30.00 a tin, this gets ridiculously expensive fast). However, I've head that people have weighed out part of the tin and mixed that wiht no problems. -tony