Shudder. Use heat shrink, you heathen. Seriously. The tape eventually always starts to unravel and will eventually expose the conductors in my experience.
Of course, that’s impossible for the sheathing, unless you cut the cord in two and make three splices. Oftentimes, only the sheathing is damaged.
Back when I still played rugby, those of us in the second row (Lock) of the scrum used it to keep our ears from getting ripped off or cauliflowered. Something like this
Isn’t that “gaffer” tape?
I use a short piece of electrical tape to cover the “Check Engine” light on my catalytic converter impaired Camry.
Nope. You had the tape part right though.
Electrical tape is a plastic/vinyl material, while hockey tape is sticky backed cloth material.
It’s not like some of us didn’t just grab Dad’s electrical tape to wrap our sticks with. In my neighborhood the goalies used snow shovels and a couple of kids would need to use a baseball bat instead of a stick. We just made do with what we had.
Unbelievable.
Yeah I got confused with the spelling of GAFA which refers to a large, mostly unpopulated, part of Australia.
I would like to have a conversation with the guys who use it to hold together coils of wire. There is a blob sticky glue every three or four feet when you uncoil the wire.
Last roll of electrical tape got used to wrap the handle and brush bow on my dog sled under the duct tape. Not really sure why, but that’s what the previous owner did, so I stripped the old and re-did it.
I also use it to tape the wires back together in my blender cord that the dog chewed through.
No. No it is not.
Electrical Tape - black and shiny
Hockey Tape - black (maybe) and presents an obvious fabric pattern
Same here. And then I complain when the adhesive has all slimed off because of sweat and heat and then my hands/gloves get all sticky because I’m too lazy, I mean busy, to replace it.
You can, but usually people use spike tape which is sold in thinner widths and comes in bright colors. They both come off the floor without leaving residue behind which is part of their utility. People marking stage floors with electrical, duct or masking tape when I worked in theatre would get handed a bottle of goo-gone and a rag.
Gaffe, gaff, gaffa and gaffer are all names I’ve seen used for the black fabric-based tape used in stage- and filmcraft.
BING !!! … we have a winner !!!
Yeah, back in the day we used to use rolls and rolls and rolls of electrical tape pulling wire through conduit …
ETA: We used friction tape on our hockey sticks … kinda like electrical tape but had some manner of fiber component … I’m told by people who can skate it helps grip the puck …
I need it for…taping something.
Duct tape works better.
They make special gap-seal tape for that, which has better stickiness properties. Problem with electrical tape is, it’s not really very sticky, and leaves things gummy. I don’t think I’d use electrical tape for that, nor for attaching yaw strings either.
We use bits of orange electrical tape to cover the static ports when we tie our sailplanes down at the end of the day – allegedly keeps condensation and bug larva out. Others claim (and I tend to agree) it just gums up the ports eventually. (One of our gliders, a version of Grob G-103, has six static ports, on the sides of the fuselage. The other have these near-microscopic holes in a ring around the TE probe.)
ETA:
See, my complaint is that electrical tape, as I know it, does this too.
So, uh, given how unreliable and dangerous it is to use “electrical tape” to insulate electrical connections, what was it developed for, and why is it called electrical tape…?
According to Wikipediait was friction tape was used originally in the days of knob and tube wiring. The quality of insulation on a splice wasn’t as big a problem then as stringing bare wire around homes and buildings was. Bare wire isn’t used much anymore, there are a number of better ways to connect wires than simple splices, and there are better insulation materials available. The tape is handy to have for securing wire nuts, marking wire, and it’s suitable for low voltage use and general purpose. Once friction tape wasn’t used so much anymore and low cost plastic tape was available the low cost plastic tape was still useful for general application. I imagine the term ‘electrical tape’ was a carry over from the days of friction tape but it’s a pretty good term for the tape electricians usually carry for random uses.
Electrical tape has some elasticity to it … it will stretch pretty good until it breaks … so as electricians are wrapping the wire bundle together they can make the bundle really tight … thus easier to pull through piping …
Duct tape, scotch tape, packing tape, ticker tape, magnetic tape, paper tape … not so elastic …