Tyvek, the Devil's Tape, Redux!

 

 Well to start off on an up note, a year ago this Wednesday was a good day in the juvat household.  Mrs. J got 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 got through that, there'was a 30 day R&R period and then surgery to visually confirm the little buggers were in fact dead and then remove their rotten bodies.

Yeah, it's been a long ride in the last 20+ months since this situation began. Visits to the medical folks are about 1 per month.   The Doctors and Medical Staff have been great. They've been very supportive, generally upbeat and answering my stupid questions without laughing (too much).  Well done y'all!

Not out of the woods yet, but the trees are thinning out . She had a colonoscopy last Friday.  I was fairly tense as she went in and while she was in surgery.  When they wheeled her back in to the recovery room, she was still asleep and the nurse wouldn't talk about it.  Finally the surgeon showed up.  His first words were "One small benign polyp, which was removed. Nothing else in there.  She's good to go!"  A quick "Thank You, Lord!" as well as a "Thanks, Doc!" were extended to the responsible parties.

 It will be nice for the both of us to go places, visit family and not have to worry if that's just a cold that one of the Grand Kids has or if it's the flu.  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 while this episode was going on is woodworking and woodworking projects.  One of those was a request for a Pikler triangle for my middle Grand child. She and her mom were living in one of our guest houses at the time as Little J was on a Solo Assignment.  They're now in England.  Need to get the final permission from the Doctor for Mrs J and I to deploy overseas and visit them.  But that should be happening shortly.

 This would be a Pikler Triangle. Source

My Mental Picture of the finished project is a little different. Here's my version of 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. 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 received many suggestions handle the problem .  Despite Bean's suggestion,  a flamethrower was not considered a viable option, He suggested it again. I declined again, but, the old board did encounter a very hot demise.  In our burn pit.

Yes, Beans, there might have been a few cackles and a "Bwaa Ha Ha" or two involved.

The Pickler triangle was a big hit, haven't checked on it since they moved to England to see if they still use it.  Will discuss that in the next phone call. 

Peace out, y'all.

juvat