Hi all,  whilst this technique may be well known, let me tell you
anyway.  My first job yesterday was to remove 176 rock-hard stumps of
rubber tube from a tracker bar -- a job that I have done before, but
hate doing.  I have painstakingly slit the tubes with a sharp blade,
and forced them off with a small screw driver, and I have used paint
stripper in the past, but today I used a heat gun (the hot air
variety).

Apart from the smell of warm rubber (which I quite like) the only
disadvantage is that if you have a _very_ powerful hot air gun, you
just might weaken the soldered joints.  The chance of this is
negligible, but better to mention it.

The rubber softens and, long before it is hot enough to burn, it may be
easily pushed off with a thin tool of some sort.  The total job took me
less than 15 minutes.

Paul Morris
Exeter, UK

 [ Other interesting and effective methods are in articles indexed at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/archives/KWIC/R/removing.html  -- Robbie