Hi all.  Because there is a roll repair thread running at present I'll
describe an effort of mine from last weekend.  I had a roll in excellent
shape except for the tag, which had been ripped off and then crudely
taped back in place with the wet-and-stick-on brown paper tape that I
remember from my boyhood.

As I first step I steamed off the brown paper tape.  Not possessing a
proper steamer, I used our stainless steel teapot and sat it on a
hotplate.  The trick seems to be to wet the paper before steaming it.
Otherwise, because the steam is so hot, the area to be unglued just
gets hot but stays fairly dry.  A large number of very short visits to
the steam jet seems to work better than a long steaming.  Oh yes; I
held the tag's D-ring with a pair of long-nosed pliers, to keep my
fingers well away from the steam.

Once the tape was gone I wet the end of the leader and steamed it a bit
more.  This made the remaining glue runny and easy to wipe off the paper.

As soon as the tag was free I dumped it in a bowl of warm water.  After
a couple of minutes it opened up and the torn-off bit of leader paper
floated free.  In this case I was lucky; there was no other damage to
the leader and, after ironing, the two bits of leader fitted together
very well.  I taped them back together using Filmoplast P tape on the
front side and the thicker Filmoplast P90 on the back, for strength.

Finally I glued the tag back in place, and since most of the repair
tape was hidden by the tag, had an almost invisible repair.

Sometimes rolls turn up which have long since lost their tags.  In these
cases I square off and cut the leader above the damage and butt-join a
new piece of paper which is the best available colour match to rebuild
the start of the leader.  I have made a metal pattern of the outline
of an Aeolian-style tag and run round this with a scalpel, using
book-binding cloth as the tag material.  For D-rings I sacrifice paper
clips, bending them round a D-shaped steel former.  The result isn't
perfect, but it does fairly well.

John Phillips in Hobart, Tasmania.