Method and apparatus for tail sealing of convolutely wound webs

A method and apparatus for sealing the tail of a convolutely wound log which include a longitudinally extending path, an infeed station and a sealing station in the path, equipping the infeed station with a pair of spaced-apart, rotatable rollers, providing one of the rollers with vacuum ports in the periphery thereof, feeding logs sequentially into the nip space between the pair of rollers, rotating the rollers, orienting the log tail to a position over the ports in the one roller, rotating the rollers to unwind the tail, and rolling each log in the path into the sealing station; the unwinding being either (a) triggered by a mark on the tail such as a UV ink stripe or (b) using an air blast.