Thanks for the input about baking tape. My opening post has several links to information on the subject. However baking tape should be seen for what it is -- a stopgap method of disaster recovery. It is never a good practice to buy tape that you know will have sticky shed for recording new material.
If you already have tapes that need baking that’s one thing. Buying sticky tape on purpose to record new material is like putting “new wine into old wineskins.” It’s a very bad idea. Much of it is physically damaged, especially near the edges, and it can’t be fully recovered even with baking.
While people are knowingly and unknowingly buying old sticky tape, the future supply of new tape is in peril.
Every sale of old tape (some of it damaged beyond repair) is a sale lost to the few tape manufacturers we have left.
One of the most responsible things we can do in the analog community is to help put sticky-shed tape in the garbage can where it belongs by refusing to buy it.
The main purpose of my effort here is to make people aware of the issue and help them avoid the whole mess in the first place.