Prototype tape dispenser

Nice! Thanks for the share!

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I believe the first year he noticeably added weight, and won, so the next year they said no extra weight or you’d be disqualified. Now, I could be remembering things wrong (it was about 30 years ago!), and it was at a church so they kinda made their own rules. I do remember he modified his car in ways he wasn’t supposed to, and it had to do with hiding the extra weight in there.

I have always loved those little hands on projects and competitions. I think they are great for kids…and adults. And I know I’m derailing this thread a little (I hope no one minds)…but one of my favourites where I grew up was the bathtub races! If you don’t know about it and want to, google Vancouver Island Bathtub Races. They definitely have gotten a lot fancier over the years, but it’s a great event! I remember people going out in unmodified bathtubs with paddles and sinking. If I’m not mistaken, one year might’ve even been the person who made it the farthest, because no one was able to finish!

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Our local council wouldn’t let the individual Cub Scout Packs make up new rules - they put the kids at a disadvantage when they competed at the Council and State levels (Pack winners went on to Council races and those winners went to State races). Our Pack generally did very well because we had a boatload of engineer & aerospace dads helping the kids. We did have a rule about the kid needing to do the bulk of the work so it wasn’t a dad project (we had a separate race category for dads who wanted to pit their engineering skills against each other :slight_smile: )

I’ve seen those. The big one here are dragon boat races on the river. That used to (pre-pandemic) attract dozens of competitive teams from virtually every college and major corporation in the area. In addition to the boats, you need to go overboard on the costumes as well.

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That’s perfect, if I can rummage up something capable of cutting one.

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And this is why everyone must own an old-fashioned Dremel unless you have a pneumatic biscuit cutter.
If using a Dremel use the fiber-reinforced cutter on the quick-release holder.

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That’s the way it was when I participated in the late ‘60s.

My father and I drilled holes in the underside and filled them with solder until the car was at the exact maximum weight limit. We also chucked the nails into his drill and used emory cloth to polish them to a mirror finish. A dash of graphite on them reduced friction even further.

Won every heat by yards. Good times… :sunglasses:

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All those neo-magnets I bought that I discovered I couldn’t use in my Glowforge! Some of the bigger ones can have a hundred-pound pull but perhaps only fifty if on the wood a quarter inch away from the metal.

But I need to figure for two or three-inch wide holders for Gorilla tape, and masking tape (and the twelve-inch masking tape). The 12" wide can have hooks to hang on a shelf or French hook wall.

Also, hacksaw blades are easy, It would be hard to find anything short of a silicon carbide wheel to cut them but they break decently with a tight bend on a vice of some sort.

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Or try a scroll saw blade. They’re shorter & you can bend it back and forth to break it.

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I’m now thinking my next workshop needs a piece of metal on the wall so I can put all my tapes up on it with magnets!

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… and discreet places on the bench with a steel plate (glued &) bolted down. There would be so many uses…,

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Another possibility…

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We use all sorts of tape colors in the film industry. If you’ve worked long enough, your stuff ends up covered in tape. Here’s a photo of a battery charger I had on set. All it did was charge phones but some of the tape we used on the media ended up on it after they were transferred.


You’ll commonly find them on strings like this, often clipped to someone (I’ve got fluorescent pink!). The thinner ones (spike tape) are used for all sorts of things—marking places, marking your stuff, marking camera settings, marks for VFX, etc. Black gaff is used for absolutely everything. There are so many types of tape used in film, it’s tough to even explain all the uses. These are all cloth tape in this photo, there’s also paper tape, which I kind of prefer, but I don’t generally need.

Here, I used console tape for tracking markers so it wouldn’t leave residue behind on the wall, plus it had maximum contrast. For some reason, the Hertz logo has an underline bit and it wasn’t present at this location so it needed to be added in post. Bonus points if you’ve seen this commercial.

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We use all these in live theatre too :slight_smile: I’m kinda loving that you can now get gaff tape at regular hardware stores. It’s generally in stock too because people who don’t know what it is are flummoxed by the price tag! (Always cheaper to get it from a supplier, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked in to a rented theatre space and found they had none :-/

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Oh yes, definitely. Any industry with acting involved uses all sorts of colored tape! Didn’t mean to single theatre out—I’m just involved in film! I haven’t noticed gaff in stores, but I’ll have to keep an eye out. Thanks for the tip!

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Didn’t figure you were :slight_smile: I love that some things are universal to the cat herding that is actors!

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Great visual!

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What exactly is gaff tape? Just colored tape?

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I believe it is similar to duck tape except it has a cloth backing and the adhesive is much more heat resistant so hot lights won’t set it on fire. Looked it up a few days ago. This is what I like about the forum, makes me look stuff up. Oh, it’s also much more expensive too.

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All this plus because it’s cloth it doesn’t reflect lights, and if you pull it up within about a week it leaves no residue.

It’s like everything you wished duct tape would do, but it never really does!

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And it’s nice and matte, unlike shiny duct tape. :heart_eyes:

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