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Gaff Tape, Duct Tape, Masking Tape, Electrical PVC Tape

(Video transcript) Hello and welcome to AV Technician. Today's topic is GAFF TAPE. In the world of Audio Visual services we many times need to use tape to tape things down and keep things together.

Here I have in front of me a variety of different kinds of tape. Things that will be very practical in your every day use. I'm first going to tease you with you this one. This is GAFF TAPE. This is what you will hope will be using in a lot of your AV work. I'll come back to that at the end of the video.

A lot of AV companies use this tape, or similar tape to it, It's a cloth tape, similar to a duct tape. They use this because its relatively cheap, easy to get, you can get it at almost any hardware, even sometimes at your grocery store and convenience store. It's the easiest stuff to get. This specific one is a very strong glue on it. It's great if you're looking for something a little more permanent. As we all know duct tape is often used as a fixer. This one happens to be a very strong black tape. The glue itself is very strong and it will really, really hold things down. This is a cloth tape. You can usually get this for $3 to $5 a roll. Sometimes cheaper, sometimes more. It's readily available.

This is something I picked up at a military surplus store. As you can see it's quite wide. It's also a cloth tape, original design and plan was repair tape for camouflage and uniforms. It is great except that because of it’s width and the strength of the glue you just about kill your shoulder when you try to open it up and use it. It has it's place but I find that it's more of a repair tape. I thought its really great because it's so wide. and be able to use it in a lot of places. I find that its definitely not as practical as it looks. But at my surplus store it was around $6 or $7 a roll, although they're probably sold out now because they are surplus.

This is another kind of tape that's on the market This is a plastic PVC style tape. In this case a bright yellow. You can get this in a variety of colours. I got this at a surplus store, that's why it's marked as seconds. The thing is that this tape allows you to mark things, especially when its bright you can use it as marking thing where you mark it with your pen, or you can also use it like on the leg of a stand or something. to bright things up so people will see and not trip on things. I get this in a variety of colours. It's very practical. It usually comes about so thick. It makes it practical for a lot of things. I've used in wet environments, as long when it goes down it's not wet. Water seems to repel off of it. As long as the water doesn't get underneath of it it's great.

Another tape that you are going to get very familiar with is masking tape. It's narrow, and you can also get the blue and green painters' tape. Masking tape is not designed to be loaded (used) permanently. It is a great tape when you want to mark something. You take a piece of tape stick it down. Then take your trusty Sharpie and you write something down. It helps label things when you're trying find things. An extremely practical piece of tape that you'll want to use. The wider stuff has it's purpose and the narrower stuff You can also get the green and the blue tapes. I'm sure there are other colours of masking tape. Masking tape is designed to be temporary. It's not designed to stay on, if you leave masking tape on too long it will stick and be very hard to get off. So that's masking tape.

Another tape that is very practical. This is electrical tape. PVC tape. It goes by a variety of names. Utility tape. It is designed to go on and stay effective It is stretchable a certain amount. There is also a type that is little more of a clothy type of electrical tape. This one here is an electrical tape that is useful when you want to wrap something. If you are wrapping around something I wrap it around Stretchy with tension. I get it around to where I want it to be I don't use a knife, most people would want to use a knife to make it nice and neat. But because it stretches until it breaks like that. One of the thing is it leaves a tail. When somebody has to come to take it apart at a later time They appreciate having a loose end that they can in turn just grab and remove again. You can, if you have a boss who that's very anal retentive, you can also do that where you tape over neatly. You want to make it so that the next person coming in has an easier job to be able to pull it off and remove it. I've seen way too many times where there's been tape stuck on something and there's no place and your going "ja ja ja" and eventually you are just pulling on cables. and damaging cables. So that's PVC electrical tape It is available in a varieties of colours too because you can even use it as a marking tape, if you get the colours your marker will work on, you can event use it as a marking tape, board tape.

This is the tape that I started off showing in the beginning. This is the tape you all wanna have. It's called Gaff tape. It comes a little bit wider than this originally. It sells for about $25 a roll, plus or minus depending what currency you are purchasing it in and where you are purchasing and the quantity. This is a pretty standard size, 2 1/4" wide. It can be gotten narrower and much wider. It is used in so many places. The thing I tell people about this one is it "sticks to everything and it sticks to nothing". You might not understand how that can be but yet the glue on this is designed to grab hold but not leave any residual behind. I've put it down on highly waxed floors, put down and pulled it up and not removed any of the finish on the floor. It works great on carpet. It does not work well in wet environments. If you are trying to lay this down on something wet this will not be effective. And it does not like to get wet. If you are trying to work in a wet environment. It is short term, it's not designed to be permanent. not like the cloth tapes, the duct tapes and so on. It's not permanent Most AV technicians get familiar with this they enjoy this tape, it's easy to use, it's easy to tear. you can see here you just grab it and you tear it so simple. Its thin, it's capable, you can do everything. I've done so many things including a way to stick up a sign. I fold it over and stick up a sign. Lot's of ways it can be used. It's an extremely practical tape. It's a little expensive which is why a lot of AV companies don't use it. If you can your AV company to use this you're going to be loving it.

A lot AV companies use this cuz it's so much cheaper. It damages floors damages carpets. That's why a lot of the hotels like this as much as they do this. So there you have the tapes of the world. The big heavy cloth tapes, The duct tapes, the electrical PVC tapes, the plastic bright colours and of course the masking tapes. These are all the tapes you will in your business.

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