If you’ve seen The Red Green Show, you will know that the “handyman’s secret weapon” is duct tape, also called “duck tape”. Duck tape saved the day and our achy fingers this afternoon. One of our staff members was unrolling spiral bindings off of old reports so we can recycle the paper. I suggested using the roller on the spiral binding machine that is used to roll the spiral bindings on to the reports, to roll the spiral bindings off of the reports. We took some reports to the machine (“¡a la máquina!” is Burqueño for going to the machine, which seems to happen quite often around Albuquerque), but the roller would not unroll the spiral bindings. The binding machine is really old, and the rubber roller had dried out and hardened over the years to have a smooth surface with small cracks. I needed someway to either soften the rubber (not much of a an immediate prospect there), or something to put on the roller to add texture so that the roller would grab the spiral binders and roll them off the reports. Wouldn’t you know it:  duck tape turned out to have the perfect texture for grabbing spiral binders! I stuck three strips of duck tape on the roller, and voilà! It rolled the spiral binders off  the reports quickly and easily. Chock up another problem solved by using the handyman’s secret weapon.