Alex Ford, thanks for the amusing write-up of this process. I did the same thing a month back it brought back memories of that oh-so-enjoyable evening. I went with the transfer sheets - if done right I think it is easier overall. I'd like to add that even minus the Xylene, the repeated heating of the old glue and transfer sheets of new glue still seems to produce a toxic cloud that a Chinese factory town would be proud of. I'd recommend venting as well as possible even going this route. I ended up with post-huff headache even despite my efforts. A few other things I'd add:
1.) Heat gun. If you have one of these (or want to buy one...they are infinitely useful), it is the one-up version of a hairdryer. They work very well and allow better control of heat intensity and direction.
2.) Use painter's tape to cover at least the edges of the skin plush. This will prevent any of the new glue from creeping over on to the plush when you are applying pressure to the new glue (assuming you go with the sheets).
3.) An old rolling pin (or in my case, a nice rolling pin covered in painters tape to protect it...don't tell my GF) allows pressure to be applied easier when re-applying.
4.) An absolute +1 on the use of heat+scraper vs. paper bags. I've done both methods and scraping is much easier, though I kept old paper bags around to place the scraped glue on to.
Mike Rolfs, using the transfer sheets also gave my skins a near-herculean ability to stick to one another. They are great for performing high-resistance shoulder flys now.
Discostew, I used the BD transfer sheets to re-glue G3 skins. I did a pretty OCD job of removing all of the old glue, and my results appear to be great so far. I'll use this opportunity to get on a soapbox and attack G3 for the absolute garbage glue they use. I have nothing against the skin plush, but their glue seems to have a a very high failure rate and is way more prone to becoming overly sticky and attaching to bases. Whatever testing they do in Canuckistan during mid-winter day-tours (i'm making assumptions here) on their glue is clearly not representative of the demands on glue of multi-season skin use for multi-day tours. I love their attachment systems, but will move back to BD in the future due to G3's inability to find a reasonable glue to use.
And finally, for my coup de grâce on this topic: just find new skins on sale and hand down your old ones if you can afford it. I've now decided re-gluing is a young man's game, best saved as a memory of my years with more free time and less money. Considering the renew sheets aren't cheap, the difference between those and new skins didn't personally justify the time-cost of this operation. Next time I'll buy a new pair of BDs and hand down my old ones to a friend.
