Use of heat to reverse sticky shed syndrome

I've been waiting for something to comment on and now I have done so, in
a fashion.  Robert

Ode to Sticky Shed

Many feet of magnetic tape did run
Through capstan and roller and then anon
Playback recording erasing head 

Reel to reel it is said
That the faster the ips then the sweeter the sound
Of poet and banshee and moorish hound

But that was the past with future unknown
Ingredients of tape were seeds still unsewn
Until heat and damp and yes old age too
Chemically grew into something quite new
Breaking the binder shedding a skin
Of magnetic oxide a layer quite thin

Then gumming the works and coming to stop
The tackiest part of the thing is not
Reels or heads or capstans hubs rollers
But loss of e.g. some cotton field hollers
Recorded just once spontaneous with feeling
Sticky shed oh sticky shed has left us all reeling.

Anon

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 7:68
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 29, 1994
                        Message Id: cdl-7-68-010
                                  ***