Tyvek, the devil's tape!

 Well to start off on an up note, a week from this Wednesday will be a good day in the juvat household.  Mrs. J will get zapped for the last time on that day.  (Beans, zapped is the official juvat terminology for radiation treatment. It just sits better with me.)  Once we get through that, there's a 30 day R&R period and then surgery mid-June to, hopefully, visually confirm the little buggers are in fact dead and then remove their rotten bodies.

Yeah, it's been a long ride since October.  Looking forward to not visiting medical folks every day.  Not that they haven't been great. No, they've been very supportive, generally upbeat and answering my stupid questions without laughing (too much).  Well done y'all!

But it will be nice for the both of us to go places and visit family and not have to worry if that's just a cold Miss B has or if it's the flu.  It will also be nice to be able to go out to dinner and not have to worry about that issue. And, maybe, just maybe, fall asleep immediately after hitting the bed. Yeah, been a long ride for both of us, and I had the easy part.

But... Thank all y'all for the prayers and kind thoughts throughout.  VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

Now, on with the post.  One of the sanity enhancers for me over the last few months has been the construction of a Pikler triangle for my middle Grand child.

 This would be a Pikler Triangle. Source

My Mental Picture is a little different. Here's the triangle itself, just the slide still needing construction.

I had a piece of melamine covered particle board left over from a project a couple of years ago.  I decided I'd use that for the slide as shown in the top picture.  LJW had said she didn't want the climbing grips on it, she wanted a slide.  So it is written, so it shall be.

I went into my wood storage loft and found the left over melamine.  It was just about the right dimensions and I'd even covered it with plastic tape to keep the melamine from getting scratched and ruined.

Little did I realize the enormity of that mistake.

I had confided to LJW that I'd have the project finished in a day or so.  That was Monday after my last post. 

I think that's called "hubris", and we all know how that ends.

 In any case, I was on the last step in the plan, so, I pulled my melamine board out of storage, noted that I had preserved it by covering the melamine with Tyvek and patted myself on the back for keeping it looking good.  Put it on my work bench, got out my pocket knife and got ready to pull it off.

I think Tyvek in the original ancient Greek means "Stronger than the gods'.

So, in actuality, I started to TRY to pull it off.  Just wasn't happening.  Knowing that my wonderful wife has lots of concoctions with various powers in the house, I went there and asked her for something to remove tape. 

She recommended Goo Gone which she already had stored in her witchcraft cupboard.  Grabbed it,  went and soaked a smallish area of the Tyvek, went away for a half hour or so to let it work it's magic.  Returned, not much removal improvement.  Reapplied and tried again. This time, I tried that in conjunction with a hot air gun.

Nope!  It wasn't coming off very well, lots of very small pieces coming off, even more left behind.  So, I decided to visit Lowe's and ask my good friends there (who had sold me the Tyvek) what the best way to remove it was.  They huddled for a few moments throwing furtive glances at me over their shoulders.  Came back and recommended Goo Gone.  I told them I had and it didn't work.  They then recommended Goof Off and/or Paint Thinner.  

I bought both.  I also saw a angled scraper and bought it.  Went home and got to work. 3 days worth of about 3 or 4, 2 hour scraping sessions per day with R&R for wrist and Dust Mask/Face shield recovery as well as chemical smell recovery in between. (Yes Beans, the Fan was on and the windows were open).

 I'm now at this point.

Most of the Tape, per se, is gone, but...

As one can see, although the tape is gone, the glue, however, is still remaining.  I'm pretty sure that should Miss B start to slide down it under these circumstances, she's going to get about 6" and come to a screeching stop stuck to the board.

I'm going to give it one more once over with the chemicals to try and remove the glue.  However, IMHO, my sanity is worth more than $50, should that fail, I'm going to buy a new melamine covered particle board and start over.

I'm open to suggestions.  No, Beans, a flamethrower will not be considered a viable option, fun though it may be.

Peace out, y'all.

juvat