Heated microspatula

This is a reply to James Martin's request about the construction of
a heated spatula for consolidation purposes.  Bob Futernick and I
designed and built a unit as you describe in the late 1970s or early
1980s.  It was composed of a rheostat from a house light switch, a
box as a frame for the rheostat, a solder-gun.  We fabricated our
own tips by hammering out different pieces of metal which we could
fit into the solder-gun slot (which was made to hold the solder tip
in my means of a screw on the side).  Our tool was conceived of as a
tape removing aid and it worked quite well.  You have to learn what
temperature the tip is at by experiment.  I devised a relative
system which I marked on the side of the rheostat dial based on
heating a oven thermometer (not very accurate), with the top of the
scale listed as unknown (it varied at times and we just referred to
it as "melt down" from the movie).  I think Bob still has it as I
recall it being packed when the Legion Paper lab moved during the
seismic upgrade. You might ask Bob if it is still in use.  I found
it useful for a number of operations besides removing tape from
paper art, depending on the tip I could make.

Niccolo Caldararo

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                 Conservation DistList Instance 10:108
                   Distributed: Monday, June 9, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-10-108-004
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