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62 comments
Isabel

@Natasha_Jay

Yes, and yes!

(and still have some...!πŸ€¦β€β™€οΈ)

Phil Scoie

@Natasha_Jay If you have,your not youngπŸ€£πŸ˜‚πŸ€£πŸ˜‚πŸ€£πŸ˜‚

Chtixof :verified:

@Natasha_Jay
(…)
- scissors
(…)
- sellotape
(…)

Zazzoo πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

@Chtixof @Natasha_Jay Yes this πŸ‘† Adding extra time to your T-60 mix tape!

_

@Natasha_Jay

Pencils don't work on head cleaners - you need 2 drops of the special cleaning fluid.

_

@TCMuffin @Natasha_Jay

And head-cleaning cassettes had no magnetic tape to be rewound.

A mechanical head-cleaning cassette. This one has a transparent shell ehich shows the geared mechanism inside which moves the wiper back and forth.
Takiro 🎨

@Natasha_Jay
Poor guy is about to get stabbed in the eye.

Woozle Hypertwin

@Natasha_Jay I usually used a Bic pen, because they fit better; you have to get the angle right with a pencil.

I even had a couple of empty shells from dried-up Bic pens specifically for this purpose.

The Psychotic Network Ferret

@Natasha_Jay pencil won't do it well, you need a Bic ball point pen with the cap!

adorfer

@Natasha_Jay this has been debunked so many times.
It was just right for people in Japan. it does not work well with the regular pencils from US or EU markets. those BIG branded ballpoint pens worked a lot better. YMMV.
youtube.com/watch?v=vaSN4J3a_6

Ash_Crow

@adorfer @Natasha_Jay it does work with regular pencils in Europe.

dasgrueneblatt

@adorfer what do you mean "debunked"? I've done it lots of times myself with all sorts of European pencils and pens. 🀷 @Natasha_Jay

adorfer

@dasgrueneblatt @Natasha_Jay during the 80ies and 90ies it did not work with pencils of Faber, StΓ€dtler and Rotring. But with the plastic ballpen writers of BIG.
(off course you can tilt the pen in an angle or fling the cassette around the pen with centrifugal force, then you can use smaller pens too.)

dasgrueneblatt

@adorfer That's possible. I don't think I had such expensive brands of pencils as a child/teenager :masto_lol:

@Natasha_Jay

Zylann

@adorfer @Natasha_Jay I used a Lego connector. Also made a custom rewinder with a motor

Petra van Cronenburg

@Natasha_Jay Yes, and I'll boost it by copying your post with a graphite pencil. 🀣

Idyll

@Natasha_Jay still needed for whiteout tape!

Randulo.com

@Natasha_Jay How do I stop my VCR from flashing 12:00?

australopithecus

@Natasha_Jay
A glimpse of what we've lost: if they were made today, each cassette maker would instead have its own proprietary winding gear shape, which may or may not work with other brands of cassette players.

Heiko R.

@Natasha_Jay 🀩🀩I used a Phillips screwdriver just as often when I didn't have a pencil on hand.

And... I still do it today. I love Tapes! πŸ™„πŸ˜

Richard Hector

@Natasha_Jay I'm glad that saving my life is unlikely to ever require stabbing me through the eyes and twisting ...

gobborg

@Natasha_Jay I haven't done it since I was a kiddo when my fingers were small enough to stick in there ........

Stu Duerson

@Natasha_Jay

For the love of God, don't let JD Vance tell you how HE did it!

Baloo Uriza

@Natasha_Jay Pretty much always had a cassette deck on me in the 1990s and I don't think I've ever had one wreck a tape that wasn't already mishandled badly... and I can count the number of unwound tapes I encountered in the wild on one hand with fingers left over.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@BalooUriza @Natasha_Jay from memory it was mostly car stereos that tended to mangle tapes (as they weren't cleaned often due to lack of access) and sometimes the use of sketchy C120s with extra thin tape..

Baloo Uriza

@vfrmedia My Kia Sportage's stereo ate a C120 the day we discovered a C120 left in the truck all the time absolutely doesn't have the fortitude to be played while 4x4ing on abandoned Forest Service fire lanes...

@Natasha_Jay

Nahmia

@Natasha_Jay Pencils are the ultimate tool that society is attempting to destroy. They can perform effectively anything, take messages, can go anywhere, control minds, most versatile weapon, along with MUCH more.

Eric Lawton

@Natasha_Jay

Before that, with a thicker fountain pen, on open reel tapes.

Nazani

@Natasha_Jay I remember birds using tapes that had been tossed out of car windows to construct nests.

Master of Crevettes

@Natasha_Jay NO. It was not done with pencils, which were too thin. It was done with BALLPENS which were exactly the right size.

Natasha Jay :mastodon: πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

@MaitreCrevettes
Some pencils worked as I remember, but you had to angle them slightly...

Master of Crevettes

@Natasha_Jay but you easily lost grip. While the bic ball pens made it possible to simply hold the pen up and get the cassette to go round and round in a swift motion that was faster and didn't require much effort.
youtu.be/yk8v9Ijp1So?si=Wx85dQ

Daniel Marks

@Natasha_Jay How about splicing tape back together using Scotch tape? Or collecting a pile of unspooled reel-to-reel tape and trying to lift it off the ground as to not tangle it further?

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