On Mon, 17 May 2010 19:43:06 +0100, Mike wrote:

Self amalgamting tape at trade prices nice idea but:

but then I am not very clever with my fingers. One of the things
I found difficult was to bind the two pieces together.

SA tape needs to be stretched as it is applied. As the OP appears to
have trouble with ordinary binding this might not be such a nice
idea.

I'm still not convinced that the heat will be too much for the stem
if done very quickly with a hot air gun and the exposed parts masked
from the heat with a layer or two of foil.

--
Cheers
Dave.