Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/09/blue-painters-tape-good-for.html
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I use it in the 2" rolls to cover the print bed of my 3d printer. It grabs the print medium pretty well, and it comes off if it grabs too well.
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Blue painter’s tape is masking tape that’s been dyed blue. It’s not magic.
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I used to work as an archeologist in the uk and we use transparent drawing film to record excavations which we hold down with masking tape so we have a lot lying around. My old boss used this tape to seal the leaking sunroof on his car as well as to hold on the plastic liner on the inside of the door.
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masking tape is a good option for homemade bandages, I find, with a little toilet paper/napkin/paper towel over the wound
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I’ve just been through this. Do not ignore the “remove within 21 days” warning. I did and paid for it with a full weekend and a good part of my fingernails.
I also did some parts with regular masking tape, and in comparison, the blue stuff left a bit less sticky residue - but it ripped and teared very easily where it had been exposed to the (winter) sun for ~3 months, so I had to peel of thousands of tiny scraps. That was another brand though. Your mileage may vary.
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We use it to hang puppy training pads for our oldest cat who thinks outside the box. But the crepe stuff is better than the 3M stuff, IMO.
I did one dig in the U.K. in my youth (I’m Canadian); a Saxon village in Milton Keynes, and we were shocked, SHOCKED to find out that you people do not sharpen your trowels.
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Yup, this! Masking tape / painter’s tape is indeed going to leave residue, and it is absolutely not a good plan for any long term storage that you don’t plan on needing a knife / scissors to open later.
A much better plan would be to use Post-It Tape. It can still leave some residue on some surfaces, but it’s the best I’ve found and is definitely nowhere near as bad as masking tape is.
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Always fold 1/2" back on itself at the end so you can lift it off afterwards - both on the roll and on your comic bag. Saves a little fingernail picking and cussing later.
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“Blocks out paint”, sometimes…
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Blue painter’s tape is masking tape that’s been dyed blue. It’s not magic.
I’m not so sure - we’ve used it for 3d-printer beds for years, it is somehow magic, sticks to plastic just the right amount until you don’t want it to then it doesn’t
If you dig sections like we do in the UK then the trowel is more of a digging tool than a scraping tool like its used in North America. When I cleaned a section I would hold the trowel at about 90 degrees to the face and that gets it clean enough for drawing / photos and it doesn’t really matter how sharp the edge is. The WHS archeologists trowel that we use is significantly more robust than the 4in marshaltown ones they use in the US I managed to snap two of the things whereas I only retired my WHS trowel when it wore down too much to be effective.
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Um, no. The blue stuff is lower-residue AND somewhat less sticky, over time (desirable for its intended purpose). Regular masking tape tends to adhere stronger, as time goes by, and is FAR more likely to damage any paint film underneath.
That said, as mentioned above it still can leave some residue.
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Potential fix for the toilet paper shortage?
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Painter’s tape may not leave as much residue, but it also isn’t as durable. It will degrade over time and if you get any moisture on it, it’s unlikely to hold up.
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Then there are then green and purple variants. Supposedly green is between regular old masking and blue; purple less sticky and residue than blue. It also could be marketing. Someone out there has probably done a questionably designed comparison and put it on YouTube.
Then there is the decorative colours so in theory one could buy blue that is blue in colour but not qualities.
I remember the nightly ritual of sharpening my trowel so that I could cut a hair with it. I still have it somewhere. I did try a larger trowel at one point, but I have small hands (I’m a woman on the petite side), and found that a larger trowel was difficult to work with.
A lot of archaeology in my neck of the woods is soil stain archaeology, and a very clean surface is desirable. A sharp trowel slices through plant roots and results in a surface with few distortions.
I remember being excited about finding a worked piece of chert in our U.K. site, and the site supervisor tossed it away “We find thousands of these things; not worth noting” he said. In Southern Ontario, it would have been like finding gold.
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But its not easy to buy. I mean my hardware store carries around 100 different types - mostly from the same maker so you have to read the very fine print. We had a problem on our rent space floor with the painters tape in use tearing off our newly cleaned floor seal. A dance class was using it and removing it in 4 hrs. So I naturally figured that the “remove within 60 days” stuff would be low adherence. Nope. That did an even better job of ripping the floorseal off. Finally got some low adhesion Samurai tape that comes off easy. So many different kinds and often better than plastic tape. Yeah. Magic.
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We used to keep a roll of blue painters tape in our kitchen, but have changed to “Artist’s Tape” from Blick. Basically the same stuff in better colors as far as I can tell. Anyway, it’s great to close a bag of chips, label stuff in the freezer, put a little piece to keep a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. We use it a lot more since cutting down on plastics.
A word of caution - off brand blue tape is very different from 3M blue tape. The cheap stuff is gooey.
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