duck tape? gaffers/gaffer tape?

[John McChesney-Young]

Wilson Gray had written:

>>FWIW, The Movie Channel once showed brief infomercials between movies.
>>The one that featured gaffer's tape showed it looking a lot more like
>>what I know as "electrician's tape" - smooth, black, stretchy plastic -
>>and not at all like duck/duct tape...

and Dave Wilton wrote:

> The infomercial was right. Gaffer's tape is electrician's tape and quite
> different from duct tape. A gaffer is an electrician (not a set builder as
> previously stated on this thread).

My understanding is that although gaffers are electricians and therefore
gaffer's tape would thus fall into the category of electrician's tape,
it's not what's commonly thought of as electrical tape, the stretchy
black insulating stuff long used by thrill-seekers to mend worn
insulation on power cords and help prevent wires which have been joined
by twisting together from electrocuting them. Gaffer's tape is rather
like duct tape with the strippability of good masking tape, neither
lifting underlying paint nor leaving adhesive residue when removed.

3M has some good information on electrical tape:

http://www.3m.com/market/electrical/elpd/index.jhtml

with a sample variety here:

http://tinyurl.com/8axoo

They have a .pdf brochure of what they call electrical tapes but which
actually appear to be all the tapes they list in their electrical
supplies catalog; i.e., all the tapes an electrician might want to have
on hand:

http://multimedia.mmm.com/mws/mediawebserver.dyn?uuuuuucAMFIuO8Vug8VuuugPOePZJBS0-

It includes both vinyl electrical tape and gaffer's tape, but the former
is allotted its own category and the latter is included with box
sealing, filament, and masking tape in a section devoted to packaging
tapes. Here's their description of it:

Highland 6910 Cloth Gaffers Tape coated cloth tape. High tack, easy tear
13.7 mil 2” x 60 yd. Sealing and holding where minimum light reflection
and glare are required.

(end quote)

In my admittedly limited experience, classic electrical tape (the black
stretchy stuff) is neither high tack nor easy to tear.

See also:

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000163.php

for more on the virtues of gaffer's tape.

John

--


*** John McChesney-Young  **  panis~at~pacbell.net  **   Berkeley,
California, U.S.A.  ***