duck tape? gaffers/gaffer tape?

[sagehen]

>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?uuuuuucAMFIuO8Vug8VuuugPOePZJB
>S0-
>
>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’Äù 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
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~
I haven't looked for it lately, but there used to be a type of tape
suitable for insulating wires and doing many other useful jobs (binding up
the hafts of tools, e.g.) called "friction tape."  It was black, cloth,
self-adhesive, slightly sticky on the upper surface, dull, coarse and easy
to tear off the roll and to lift off itself or other surfaces. It was
definitely an electrician's tape.
A. Murie