I am something of a tape aficionado and it’s great to see all these suggestions.
Another missing tape type is water-activated or self-adhesive gummed brown-paper (Kraft) tape. It’s the fibre reinforced stuff that applies like wallpaper to Amazon packaging.
Indeed! It's also worth noting that the USPS (at least my local office) requires any package sent via Registered Mail to be covered in its entirety with this and only this tape (water activated, not gummed).
Registered Mail is their most secure product - chain-of-custody, stored under lock-and-key at each hop along the transit path. So at least according to the USPS, this stuff is as good as gold.
(A slight pain to apply what with water activation and all, but man does it hold!)
As a bit of a tape connoisseur, I want to point out that gaffer's tape is very different from duct tape. People often confuse the two. Unlike duct tape, gaffer's tape is easily removed, doesn't leave a sticky residue, and is light proof (very useful for light proofing edges of blinds or curtains if you like to sleep in total darkness). Duct tape and gaffer's tape are about equally thick and strong, and both tear easily crosswise using just your fingers. Gaffer's tape is very difficult to find in any retail store; you have to order it online, and of course it is much more expensive than duct tape.
FYI- most music stores, and every guitar center I have ever been in, stock gaffer tape. It's a little more expensive {19.95 at B&H vs 29.99 at Guitar Center for a 50yd roll} but it has saved my butt a few times when I've needed it in a hurry. I volunteered as tech crew in a community theater, and there was one time where I hadn't reordered in time and dress rehearsal was that evening. Makes sense that musicians would need it as well.
I'll definitely second that it is really useful stuff, I almost always prefer it over duct tape.
I used to think this, too. Then I used it on shitty Ikea "melamine" "tables" and now my CTO has to stare at tables that look like they're missing patches of fur. At least both tables cost less than the roll of tape!
We had to use ‘heritage tape’ for old parquetry floors. I don’t know how much it cost, but it was enough for the company to pay us the additional 15 minutes to roll it back up neatly on the roll. Not a terrible way to make a few extra dollars at the end the night - it was a lot like mindfulness.
When removing cables gaffer taped to the floor, always remove the tape from the floor and the cable at the same time. Never remove the cable from the floor with the tape (which may be tempting, as you can just yank the cable up). Otherwise you will find yourself spending half an hour trying to release said cable from the tape's gooey embrace.
I mostly use regular gaff tape on cables, but if you regularly have problems getting the tape off of the cable there is another kind with a non-adhesive channel in the middle of the tape (Pro calls it Cable Path).
I gotthe habit of using 4” barrier webbing tape with gaffers on either side to make wire chases. That way there was nothing stuck to the cables and if another cable needed to run the same route, one side could be lifted, the cable slid in, and then reapplied.
>When removing cables gaffer taped to the floor, always remove the tape from the floor and the cable at the same time.
"at the same time"? Is this equivalent to removing the tape from the floor, then detaching it from the cable? I'm not sure how you can remove the tape from them both at the same time.
I believe that somewhereoutth means that after the tape removing operation you must have three separate separate components, used tape, cable, and floor. If you separate the tape+cable from the floor the tape tends to wrap around the cable and stick to itself making removal very difficult.
It means removing the tape while leaving the cable in place on the floor (perhaps held down with your foot). Remove all the tape on a given section of cable before picking the cable up.
Technically, sure, the tape is likely in contact with one of the cable or the floor for a fraction longer than the other, but you get the idea.
Tangentially related point: the names of certain kinds of sticky tape are, similar to vegetables, pretty much inscrutable between English and other languages.
I've been looked at (and treated by) staff at Home Depot et al as a complete idiot for asking for 'repair tape' (which, of course, in US-English is 'duct tape', or, 'duck tape' if you really want).
One good thing about the Internet (yeah!) is that US-English terms for such items are now more or less commonplace. So, at least, if I ask for 'duck tape' (in English, in my native language it would still lead to much confusion...), I get the repair tape I need. Progress!
came here looking for this comment as its one of those minor peeves - duck tape is from WWII era and is a water resistant cotton tape - modern home depot duct tape is a plasticky, sticky all, purpose fastening tape (not so good for sealing ducts, btw).
There is something called gaffer's tape which I feel like might be more similar to the original duck tape.
To be really technical about it: there's a reasonably popular brand of tape called "Duck" (https://www.duckbrand.com/). They refer to their main product, which is a kind of duct tape, as "Duck Tape." To clarify that the term "Duck Tape" refers only to their company's product, they refer to it as "Duck Tape® Brand Duct Tape."
So the phrase "Duck tape" is fine, if you capitalize the first word and use it to refer to tape made by the Duck brand. Likewise, "Duck Tape" is fine, if you capitalize both words, since it is the name of the specific product line made by Duck.
In fact, if you call store-brand adhesive bandages "Band-Aids," and you call store-brand acetaminophen "Tylenol," you could argue that it makes sense to call store-brand duct tape "Duck Tape." And if you don't always capitalize "Band-Aids," you could argue that it makes sense not to capitalize "Duck Tape" either.
So I would argue that using the phrase "duck tape" to refer to duct tape is fine, provided you accept that it is effectively a genericized trademark.
Fascinatingly this folk etymology is incorrect. According to Wikipedia[0], the “duck” refers to cotton duck[1], a strong fabric that can be made waterproof, from which the original duck tape was made.
“Duct tape” (with a T) is in fact the retronym and was coined when duck tape started to be used for ducting.
All of this doesn’t explain how Duck-brand tape managed to get a trademark on an existing generic term.
To clarify: I'm not claiming that the phrase "duck tape" in its original sense was derived from the branded product "Duck Tape"; as you point out, the phrase "duck tape" came first, and was derived from cotton duck.
However, if you use the phrase "duck tape" not in its original sense, but as (effectively) a new word--as a genericization of "Duck Tape"--then you would (IMHO) be quite correct to call duct tape "duck tape."
I guess this depends on whether you think that this use of "duck tape" is actually a new sense of the phrase, or just a continued misusage of the preexisting sense.
I would argue for the former, since IIRC the phrase "duck tape" actually fell out of popular usage for a while before the time when the Duck brand emerged.
This suggests that the phrase "duck tape" was effectively resurrected with a new meaning--that of a genericized trademark derived from the "Duck Tape" brand.
Google Ngram Viewer seems to partially back this up--note that "duck tape" declined in popularity from 1943 to 1963, slightly reemerged around when the Duck Tape brand got its name in 1975, but only really took off between 1987 and 2007: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=duck+tape&year...
I can't explain why usage increased slightly between 1963 and 1975, though. Hmm...
On a tangent to the topic of adhesive bandages, as a bit of a connoisseur of tapes myself, I want to mention that the best band aids I've ever found are Nexcare Waterproof Bandages[1]. Even if you don't care about waterproofing, they stay in place massively better than any other type of band aid I've tried. Years ago, Consumer Reports rated them as the very best as well. Most other adhesive bandages, especially cheap ones, are ridiculously awful, coming undone within minutes.
It has a stiffness that holds its position without being tacky or sticky. doesnt slip like an ace bandage might. great for covering bandages or wrapping ankles, etc
And "Kinaesthetic tape" (KT) also nice when recouping from twists and sprains...
It looks like CountyComm sold out. I remember the type items being different (actual mil-spec over-run type of stuff), and now it looks like they're just selling tacti-cool things now.
They didn't use to have Twitter or Facebook share buttons on their comments (did they even have comments?), they didn't have a "VIP" program, carbon fiber combs, glow-in-the-dark patches that say "operator", etc.
Good for them I guess, but oh well. I guess I'll never buy that Universal Cleaning Stick from them now.
The "Coban" (=cohesive bandage) tape is great, but I've only ever seen it used on animals, for whom it's also sold as "Vet Wrap". It sticks to itself, but basically nothing else, which is great for securing things to a hairy/furry limb.
A most inferior list. It's got trademarked versions of ordinary kinds of tape, but not my favorite tape: glass cloth tape.
Glass cloth tape, such as 3M 361 https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b40068300/ , is remarkable stuff. It is, ironically, a much better tape for ducts than duct tape. It is also the only tape approved for use in Antarctic intermittent duty hot water systems, which have to swing from -40°C to +100°C and back. Daily. ("Approved for use" meaning here "doesn't fail right away".) It's not an all-purpose tape (especially not once you see the price), but nothing else can do what it can.
It's also missing Z-tape. Double sided sticky tape that only electrically conducts in the z-axis. Great for where you would traditionally solder a component to a PCB but you don't want it to be a permanent fixture. https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b10167835/
Unroll the tape on your right index finger, starting from where your thumb meets your index. That's the origin. Your thumb points along the positive Z direction. Your index points along y, and x is your middle finger points along x.
A small wad, after getting stuck to itself and an unsuccessful attempt at separating it, that is now stuck to one of your fingers no matter how hard you attempt to flick it off.
Fascinating! Seems like that could be an effective way for hobbyists to attach BGA components to a PCB without a reflow oven - any idea if that’s been tried?
From the datasheet linked there, it looks like the minimum recommended spacing to ensure electrical isolation between adjacent conductors is 15 mil (0.4mm). In an example I found here [1], the pitch between BGA pins is 0.5 mm to 1.0 mm, with pad sizes roughly half of the pitch. So it looks like for the larger pitches, it might just work. 3M also says they'll do custom tape with better isolation, but that might just be more expensive than a reflow oven.
I’d say one of the most interesting jobs in my social orbit is a friend who works in material sciences for 3M - while it’s not all “Eureka” moments he does a lot of fun work trying to solve specific problems with the products 3M sells. The real interesting stuff he talks about is in the oddly specific use cases.
Might I suggest adding it to the list then in addition to this comment? You seem to know more than just "it exists" since you cite use cases and advantages.
The problem isn't that the list is incomplete. It's that the endeavor is poorly conceived.
You can names tapes by their intended use, or by their adhesive properties, or by the material of the substrate, etc. Depending on what naming scheme you use, you get different lists. Look at 3M's list of tapes [0], for example. Their tape names don't match those on the wikipedia page, because they're named after intended use. The wiki page uses all strategies simultaneously. For example, they have a category called "foil tapes", which includes the wiki page's "aluminum tape" as a subcategory. The wiki page has "scotch tape", ironically a brand owned by 3M, which doesn't even appear on the 3M page (presumably they fall under that page's "office tapes" category).
I'm not just nit-picking about naming. I'm saying the list is arbitrary because it resolve hash collisions arbitrarily.
I believe that list is of sufficiently low quality that it cannot be improved incrementally. But instead of saying that, I offered the most interesting tape I know.
Additionally, I categorically refuse to edit Wikipedia any longer. Its culture is toxic and I will not trade my precious sanity to further entrench it.
As my great grandmother used to say ”It’s the user not the wiki.”
Add your knowledge of tapes to the list and make this an excellent list by your own standards and add to the joy and collective success of the human species.
Ours used it - although maybe not the brand named one. Our entire school (~100 years old) was made of a combination of brick and cinder blocks (that were painted on the inside) so no real good surfaces to mount anything using nails and scotch tape didn't stick too well. Blu Tack everywhere (we even called it that).
A friend of mine decorated her entire college apartment for $10: One coffee-table art book from the B. Dalton outlet store, and one pack of Blu-Tak. Slice pages out of the book, stick 'em up, change as often as desired.
Of course the prints were ruined, but who cared? I would never use it on anything important.
I inherited a stupendous number of framed pictures (dangerous glass!) from my parents and was frankly resentful of it until the day I took them all apart and stored the pictures.
These days my main side project is a frameless ‘decoration system’ motivated by that experience (and others) but you do have to be more careful in your materials choices if you don’t want in framed prints to fade quickly.
If you want to get an idea of the variations on a theme, have a look at military supply identifiers and classification. There's an enormous range of just about anything, including tape.
Another example is paper. And in the past, typewriter ribbons.
I recommend checking out 3M VHB tape. It's essentially an extremely strong, pressure-sensitive double-sided tape.
You can use it to affix (pretty much) anything to anything, without the mess and general annoyance associated with superglue--just put the VHB tape between two surfaces and squeeze them together until they stick.
I learned about this recently. I was also told that it can be removed very easily with isopropyl. I wanted to buy some but I could only find it in large quantities from industrial suppliers. Also on Amazon with lots of reviews warning that it's a counterfeit product. I wonder why 3M wouldn't want to sell it to consumers.
If you're in the US, Home Depot sells 1" wide VHB in small rolls for about $20. It's branded as Scotch Mount Extreme (or similar).
The tape industry has an interesting structure. Companies like Bron and 3M create giant webs of tape and put them on very wide rolls. These rolls are sold wholesale to "converters" which are companies that slice up the rolls into smaller rolls and different shapes for different applications. Most converters will work with you to make a custom roll of tape - some will even package it for retail - but a company like 3M has no interest in selling you 20 feet of VHB when they can sell 20,000sf to a company that will package and distribute.
I've once went on an Amazon-buying tape rabbit hole, and have had good luck with this store on Amazon (TapeCase) - https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/CE5D8D53-88AA-466E-BF16-5....
You can buy few different kinds of tapes from 3M cut down into normal sizes. I bought some VHB 4910 clear mounting tape, and some VHB RP25 foam mounting tape.
Here's a doc where you can read more about the different kinds, I never knew there's so many! You can then pick&chose whatever works best (say adhesion to metals or plastics, or say low resistance to solvents so that you can easily remove it etc)
https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1015904O/3m-industrial-a...
Check auto parts stores, specifically ones that also sell refinishing supplies and paint. A very similar product is also available from hobby shops, and is sold as 'servo tape'. This is very commonly used to adhere trim and accessories to vehicles; in a former life I was a mechanic at a 4WD shop that also sold truck accessories. We used this to attach those plastic bug deflectors you see on truck hoods, and never had any issues. The main thing is, the surfaces need to be EXTREMELY clean. Wipe down with IPA, let dry, then wipe down again with a fresh cloth and more IPA.
I'm also calling BS on alcohol removing this stuff, I have tried that unsuccessfully. I did have luck with goo-gone and a scotchbrite pad, but that was very difficult and time consuming. This is a permanent adhesive.
I find self-amalgamating tape to be good to finish bicycle bar wraps instead of electrical tape, or for chainstay protection. I can imagine it could also be useful where it's difficult to apply heat shrink tubing. It's amazing, fuses to itself, sort of like tyre patches.
There is tape marketed
for handle bars. There were two kinds when I was a mechanic a long time ago, the French cotton sticky tape, and the Italian brightly colored non sticky plastic tape.
Everyone wraps from the bar end to the stem but I was taught to wrap from the stem to the bar end. Stem to end doesn’t curl with use as your hand glides over the edge instead of lifting the edge as happens with an end to stem wrap.
Also a stem to end wrap requires no additional tape to hold it in place. The bar end button holds it together.
Two unusual but very useful and crazy expensive tapes, if you have a boat:
PTFE Film Tape
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b40070573/
(don't let that picture fool you, it is a tiny expensive roll. Known as "millionaires tape" with good reason).
Articles are written, in whole or in part, by AI. I didn't visit the parent link, but there are tons of these pages that are designed to look like blogs, many even include fictitious author pictures and bios.
Probably the tape I use the most, at least when hiking for fixing gear as well but mostly user related problems — Leukotape. It adheres to skin much better than moleskin and stays for weeks. I apply it as soon as I feel a hot-spot forming on my feet to prevent it from turning into a blister, or as a preventative measure for areas that I know are prone to blisters.
Long story short: acrylic pressure sensitive adhesives are very, very good. Huber Zip tape, 3M 8067, and tapes from Siga and Pro Clima tend to be very good when you care about weather/water resistance.
Funny, was just the other day praising duck tape and how it can seemingly solve close to any problem in the world. Including ensuring our (previous) car front bumper didn't fall off after a small collision.
You can even say it saved the lives of three moon-traveling astronauts! It was used in creating an adapter for one kind of CO2-scrubbing filter, onto another, on the Apollo 13.
Also used to repair part of a moon rover in deployment, I think it was a front wheel protector thing.
I need to hide some cables under my standing desk, I tried duct tape and it lasted a couple of days, I tried gluegun...and that didn't work out either...anyone has this same issue and has figured out how to tape the cables (chargers, desk lamp, etc) to the table's undersurface firmly once and for all?
3M command adhesives are really great in my experience, I'm using their cord hangers [0] for cable management under my desk and haven't had any issues. The only thing that might be causing problems is if the bottom side of the desk is unfinished MDF, in that case any adhesive won't work since the fibers themselves are coming off. Painting the underside should solve that issue.
I ran into the same problem, and the main cause is that the downward force is able to slowly peel off any tape that is solely on the bottom of the desk. If the tape is extended onto the sides or top, it becomes much sturdier, because the tape would need to be dragged across the surface, rather than slowly peeled off. However, that makes the tape be much more visible.
I'd recommend instead adding some screw hooks to the bottom of the desk. The mechanical fasteners can be entirely on the bottom of the desk, and are sturdier I'm general than the tape.
For anyone wondering what "nuclear grade" means here, it's normal 8979 tape plus an assay for guaranteed low halogen content. This is desirable as halogens, particularly chlorine, are a major cause of metal corrosion. So guaranteeing your tape is low in them makes it better suited to uses where any corrosion that forms cannot be detected or repaired. Like a nuclear plant!
I'm seeing a decent amount of complaints in this thread about this list not having X, Y, or Z item in it. Yes the comments are good but why not also attempt to edit the list on Wikipedia to include the thing you know it lacks?
No moisture gets in or out and it’s not sticky or clingy in the way tape and plastic wrap can be. It’s also reasonably stretchy so you can fit it over irregularly shaped openings if needed.
Kimwipes, on the other hand, are a common lab product I’ve never really understood. Seems like glorified lint-free tissue paper to me.
That kinesiology tape is an esoteric thing, isn't it? Even though many people seem to use them I have a hard time believing that something like this might work.
One theory is that it's less about actually supporting a joint and holding it in a particular position and is actually more about the sensation it provides which can remind you (consciously or unconsciously) to move in a different way.
I don’t really want to out my IP address by posting anonymously. I don’t really want to link a Wikipedia account to my HN account by having you correlate content. I don’t really want to put the effort into writing something only to have it reverted by some jumped up weirdo who guards “their” page.
Reading Wikipedia is great. Edition on the other hand is, for me, a byline for hyper dramatic pseudonymous social media. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.
Another missing tape type is water-activated or self-adhesive gummed brown-paper (Kraft) tape. It’s the fibre reinforced stuff that applies like wallpaper to Amazon packaging.
Here is an example:
https://venuspack.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/water-ac...
It’s supposed to be better for recycling. You can write on it. It also just looks and feels nicer than brown plastic cellophane packing tape.