If you’ve spent a bit of time in record stores then chances are you’ve seen this more than once. The first-time buyer, girlfriend shopper or friend-of-a-friend who’s belt and/or jeans do not wear the worn straight lines of record addiction. Given a fresh piece of shrink wrapped wax, they try to avoid the gaze of the seasoned pros along the listening decks as they nervously hand it back to the shop assistant and quietly ask, “could you open this for me please?”

Luckily, our heroes over at The Record Store have provided us with the sort of guidance we’ve come to expect from their nurturing attitude towards the next generation of record buyers. Sunday scratch lessons, legal graffiti walls, second-hand bin sales, live gigs, beer and barbecue, and their trademark schooling of passing down knowledge, The Record Store has long-since been an embodiment of everything you want in a record store, but often don’t find. Leave the pretentiousness at the door, grab a stool and a beer and hang out a while.

Below they take you through what has affectionately been dubbed ‘The Coulomb Manoeuvre‘, complete with diagrams of both variations and an explanation on where the name comes from.

The Classic Coulomb

Place the record as shown (opening down) and rub gently back and forth from left to right applying only as much pressure as the weight of the record exerts. Approximately 10 to 20 rubs will be enough to wear the plastic down and it should simply split along the opening of the record cover with the slightest coaxing.

The Wear And Tear Coulomb

The “Wear and Tear” Coulomb is exactly the same as the ‘Classic’ except you use the thicker part of your pants around the belt line to avoid creating unseemly friction lines in your strides. As you ar not using the weight of the record you will need to apply a small amount of pressure but take care not to push too hard or you will damage the cover.

Who is Coulomb and why is this particular manoeuvre named after him?

Charles August Coulomb (1736-1806) adds to the second law of friction; “strength due to friction is proportional to compressive force”, “although for large bodies friction does not follow exactly this law”. Coulomb published the work referring to Amontons. The second law of friction is known as the “Amontons-Coulomb Law” referring to work done by the two scientists in 1699 and 1785 respectively.

The Amontons-Coulomb law of friction holds for many different material combinations and geometries but unlike Newton’s first law, nothing fundamental can be derived from it. link

We decided to drop the Amontons from the name as it was too unwieldy and Coulomb sounds way better anyway. Respect to Amontoms but he can blame his mother – or in this case, his father for having an ungainly family name.