Well it looked like bacon rind the first time I saw it, as it came snaking
out at me during the trial run of a newly acquired Recordo roll.  The roll
was almost finished and seemed in As New condition until about two feet from
the end.  Then this piece of thick stuff with all the flexibility of a bit
of crispy bacon rind (and much same colour too) appeared and tried to go
over the tracker bar while keeping to the shape of the tightly rolled paper.
The result was a number of notes not envisaged by the composer, M. Gounod,
who luckily wasn't there to hear it.  I put the roll away until about two
weeks ago, when I decided to have a proper look to see if it could be fixed.

The bacon rind turned out to be masking tape, so I tried using White Spirit
to remove it.  This got the tape off but left the adhesive behind.  I tried
water, very cautiously. This had no effect so I tried methylated spirits.
This worked well; next time I'll use it straight away.  I used the White
Spirit initially because it usually works well in removing old-fashioned
transparent sticky tape from rolls.

What was revealed underneath the masking tape, a nasty rip in the roll?  No,
a music perforation!
It wasn't a random mis-punching because I have a duplicate copy of the roll
and the punching is there.  Was it a mis-played note not noticed by the
arrangers?  Well that bit of the roll sounds perfectly musical to me.   So
why ever was the tape applied in the first place?

Putting the tape on and then off again 50 years later hadn't done the chain
bridging any good so I did some microsurgery with tiny slivers of Filmoplast
P paper conservation tape.  I always use this tape for roll repairs
nowadays.  It's thinner than Scotch Magic Tape, is removeable if you are
quick and after all is intended for permanent paper repairs.  However I'm
not so sure about its reported property of being removeable after some time
with water.  On another roll repair recently I mis-applied a bit of this
tape but didn't discover the mistake for a few days.

I tried applying water to the topside of the tape.  It came off alright, but
left the adhesive behind  and I had to use methylated spirits to remove
that.  I never completely got rid of the stickiness, which didn't in fact
matter because I had to put another piece of tape there.  But it could be a
real nuisance.  The Recordo roll plays perfectly now by the way.
John Phillips.