I use the same American Harvest and had good success for many years.

--- On Sun, 2/19/12, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] ovens for baking tapes
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sunday, February 19, 2012, 5:48 AM

Hi Joe:

The most cost-effective solution is the good old American Harvest food dehydrator. I've used one for dozens of tapes over 10+ years and never had a problem. You can modify the trays to deal with small reels. I've used it for 1/4" and 1/2" tapes, I'm not sure if it works well for larger width tapes. You can buy extra trays and I've done as many as 8 NAB reels at once. Per Bill Lund, formerly of 3M, bake a tape for 12 hours (or more in some cases), let it cool 12 hours, then transfer it. Expect SSS to return, so consider how good your tranfer chain is before undertaking baking.

If you want to get more heavy-duty, you can get into convection ovens and incubators. If you have a large project with good funding, I would say a larger-scale baking process should be considered so as to optimize work-flow. In my case, baking 8 reels, letting them cool and then baking 8 more while they were being tranfered, etc, worked very well. The biggest baking-transfer job I've had was 40 reels, so this was within the scope of the American Harvest oven. I found it worked OK on 12-hour duty cycles each day for 5 straight days. More typical for my operations are single-tape bakes now and then. I've baked and transferred 50+ of my own reels, but not in a large batch, just a few at a time. I finished the last one that had content I couldn't find elsewhere a few years ago and am satisfied with the transfers, so it's unlikely I'll need to bake those again.

As far as a timer, the dehydrator is either on or off, so a simple plug-in appliance/lamp timer would work fine.

This is low-tech stuff. There are many more options if you want a higher budget and more complexity. YMMV, usual disclaimers.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2012 11:07 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] ovens for baking tapes


> Archivists and Techies,
> 
> What are recommended ovens for baking tapes with SSS?
> 
> I am of course looking at price, and I don't need one that will go to 1800 degrees. If it topped out at 150 F that would certainly be enough for what I need.
> 
> Also something that does not shut itself off or can be programmed for a specific length of time.
> -- Joe Salerno
>