: For direct and localised heat, you might try replacing the tip of a
: soldering iron with a piece of stiff wire (the ubiquitous
: coat-hanger wire..)

: With an appropriately bent wire, and a steady hand you should be
: able to melt it out.. It might be cleaner and easier just to cut
: the fitting off and do it again though!

: Alternatively, splitting the fitting on the inside of the deck
: might give you enough play to get the glue out, and then a small
: patch of cloth would seal it back together..

: A further thought just occurred to me on this topic - I have some
: 8mm solid rubber shock cord. It has no sheath and is solid - not
: made of millions of small fillaments.

: The same stuff can be had in smaller gauges, and that would
: probably work better than the glue sticks as it's designed to
: stretch without breaking, bends without flattening, and has the
: same 'shrink' factor when stretched that makes the gluestick
: idea work.

I dripped penetrating oil into each fitting last night. This morning I screwed a wine cork puller into each end of what was left of the glue stick ends and stretched until they started to shrink then my wife clipped off one end and the remaining glue stick popped right out. Won't be using that approach again :((
I will be doing this again in a couple of weeks so I am going to do some more testing - in order A) teflon wrapped glue sticks B) Plastic tube and rope C) solid rubber shock cord. I need to come up with a reliable plan without the stress factor:)
Thank you Dwight, Will, Al and Simeon:))
Randy