There must be a way

Today was not the usual serene pleasure-filled Thursday with a walk in the morning and a nap in the afternoon. Today was "I have to fix that leak in the pipe" day, and my husband tackled the job with determination. Due to my insistance, I say with a guilty grin, we had applied an epoxy-filled mesh tape to the leaky part, following directions to the letter. The instructions said that it would harden in about a half-hour and it did do that. It also said that it would harden like steel, and it did that too. It said that it would fix the leak, and that it did not do. We put a pan under the pipe where it was dripping down onto the cement under the enclosure, and assured each other that maybe it would cure itself overnight.
I sneaked out early this morning and checked the pipe and guess what? It was leaking worse than before. I scurried back to bed and waited until my husband woke up, not wanting to zap him with the bad news before he had a chance to fully wake up. When I did tell him, he was quite composed and assured me that he had expected that bit of news and would take the tape off and try to solder it himself.
I defy anyone to take that tape off a pipe once it has hardened. My husband is as patient an old dude as I have ever known, and I am not exagerating when I say that he worked for five hours on that thing, and nothing worked. He tried cutting it, chiseling it, sawing it, sandpapering it, and finally, in an act of desperation, setting it on fire. I'm not kidding, we even tried that as a last resort. It neither softened nor released its hold on the pipe. Actually, it didn't burn, and we were lucky we didn't set the house on fire. But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and he tried shredding it off with a pliars that had teeth on the grippers, and little by little, he ground it off and got down to the copper pipe again. Since plumbers charge $90.00 an hour, we will try to solder it ourselves if we can, and I don't doubt for a moment that my husband will manage that, too. For a man who put down hardwood floors throughout the house, working on his hands and knees so he could see the nails, this should be a job that he can do. A week from today we will be laughing at ourselves and remembering the event as just another episode in our eventfilled lives.
The water has been turned back on, the pipe has been temporarily patched with duct tape, and we will tackle the job again tomorrow. Wish us luck.