This summer I have been restoring a Star (Lido Supreme) Fantasia Pearl kit and have run into some "interesting" wrap issues...

The wrap on the two up toms is "slumped" a little causing some puckering on the top of some the lugs, but it is stable and not cracked. I did the Novus treatment, put the lugs back on them, and they look great.

When I moved on to the floor tom things got a little funky...

The wrap slumping is more pronounced on the FT, which makes sense, the up toms have spent their life tilted at an angle thus reducing the effect of gravity pulling down on the wrap (recall inclined plane problems from physics class), or maybe the FT just had less glue on it from the factory? As a result of the slumping, there are a few spots where the wrap has split near a lug. Luckily a previous owner used clear packing tape over the cracks, which kept them from getting snagged and broken, so all the wrap is still there. In fact, the clear tape was really almost invisible on top of a busy pattern like Fantasia. As much as I appreciated the red-neck tape fix, my plan was to glue down the wrap around the split areas to stabilize it, and then possibly try the formica countertop seam sealer to fill in the cracks.

This is where the first Fantasia specific issue arose...

The background "color" of the wrap pattern is clear, the outside of the shells are painted white and that shows through, so that limited me to using a glue that dries clear. I would have typically just used contact cement, but it's brownish, so I needed another option. I found that Gorilla now makes a clear contact cement so I picked some up and gave it a try. I wish the formula was a little thinner for better spreadability, but the wait time is only a few minutes before you can press the surfaces together. I gently held open the wrap along the cracks and used a small brush and toothpicks to spread it back in behind the wrap as far as I could. It seems to have done the trick. It has been a few days and the wrap is holding tight, and it dried crystal clear as advertised.

The other clear wrap issue was an odd one...

What I thought were rust colored stains on the outside of the wrap near the lugs turned out to be saw dust (AKA Man Glitter) trapped behind the wrap from when the lug holes were drilled originally. It is the dark brown luan wood so it easily shows through the clear parts of the wrap pattern (see photo). I wonder if the wrap was originally more opaque before sun fade set in, because you would think that the saw dust issue would have been noticed in the factory??? Because the wrap was originally glued sparingly, maybe only at the seam, the saw dust is still free to move around behind the wrap. I was able to tweeze out some along the edges of the lug holes, and get some to shake loose near the top and bottom edges, but the only way to get it all would be to remove the wrap entirely. Not something I was willing to risk. Luckily the Fantasia Pearl wrap is busy enough and yellowed enough that the sawdust is not really noticeable from a few feet away, which is good enough for this kit.