I recently got in a number of tapes that have been treated with silicone and
could use some advice. The tapes are obviously hydrolyzed (sticky shed).
Instead of treating the tapes for hydrolysis by "baking", someone decided to
treat the tapes with silicone. When they still couldn't run the tapes, they
were sent to us.
Just looking at the tapes, it is obvious that they put too much silicone on
the tapes (there are actually places where the tape surface is spotted and
mottled).
My questions are:
1) Does anyone have any good suggestions on how to get the silicone off the
tapes? Tissue wipes and burnishing the surface can only do so much.
2) Has anyone heard of or can anyone speculate about any potential problems
with "baking" tapes that are treated with silicone? Common silicone spray
contains 111 trichlor but that has such a low boiling point that I can't
imagine any is left after the initial application. On the other hand,
silicone itself has such a high combustion point that there would be nothing
left of the tape before one even got close to relevant temperatures. Are
there any other common ingredients or reactions that could be a problem?
3) Since there is obviously way too much silicone on the tapes, how likely
is it that it will transfer onto the guides and heads of the playback
machinery and, if it does, how can it be removed? While some of the tapes
are open reel, some of the material is helical video. I'm not really keen
on covering either linear heads or helical heads with silicone and trashing
the machines.
Any advice would be welcome.
Peter Brothers
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