Uh... safely removing salsa from tape?

[evm1024]

Hey folks,

I discarded a tape loop last night, but I realized later that I needed to reuse it. So, I pulled it out of the trash. Problem is, there's some salsa and rice on the tape, because I discarded it in the kitchen wastebasket. Ha ha.

I'm sure SOMEBODY here has done something like this before. How should I clean the tape?

I'm going to use a separate wastebasket for tape clippings from now on

OK, I'll take a serious SWIPE at it.

Cleaning - when using a solvent to clean something you need to look at 2 factors. The first is: will the solvent dissolve the theing you are cleaning, second: will the solvent dissolve the thing you want off.

Isopropol will not dissolve tape or binder if left on for a small time so that is good. However salsa does not dissolve very well in it either.

I would think that removing salsa would be a 3 process thing. 1) mechanically remove onions and goo, 2) chemically remove any oils that are sticking to the tape and 3) dry without leaving a film.

You want to remove oils without removing any lubricant that may be part of the tape.

You might take the tape and toss it into a clean sink that you have filled with lukewarm clean water that you have added a few drops of joy to. Swish it around and then remove the tape from that sink and lift into the other sink (assuming that you have dual sinks) with more water and more joy. Do this a few times then start putting in a sink without joy to rinse. This is in effect a serial dilution which removes the soap quite quickly. Lastly how to dry this bundle of tape.

I would think that you can take a ckean cloth such as a cloth diaper and gently pull the tape through it winding it in a spool as you go. I might toss in a warm air stream as well.

This might be overkill but then again this is what I might do with something that I wanted to keep for a few decades.

--Ethan

 

[sweetbeats]

I passed some on to him in your place...

Me too.

 

[lo.fi.love]

I need to save this loop. I recorded straight from the source to the tape and spliced it into a loop. I have a copy on cassette but I really don't want to suffer the loss of quality by using that instead of the original.

I think I'll just clean the affected areas with a minute amount of liquid dish soap, "rinse" the tape by pulling through an old, damp, soft t-shirt, and then let it air-dry. After I'm done with it, I'll give my transport a thorough cleaning.