Duct tape in the right hands is enough to create a masterpiece while solving some of life’s most common challenges. You will certainly have no trouble finding this staple in your house or at the grocery store and it’ll be a breeze finding a ton of uses for using tape.

Duct-Tape Art

Tape art is an artwork created with adhesive or packing tape. It developed from urban art in the 1960s, as an alternative, due to the widely spread use of spray cans in the urban art scene. Consequently, Tape can be used to produce a “stained glass” effect if you apply it to glass or plastic which is lit from behind. You can also attacch it to a wall to form the outline or an image, or can be shaped into three-dimensional sculptures.

Duct-Tape Hammock

Who couldn’t use a waterproof hammock? This thing is super durable and above all, it looks cool, too. Therefore, find our step-by-step instructions on how to craft this on Make:Projects.

Duct-Tape Desk Organizer

Crafted all your tape dream projects and not sure what to do with the cores of the tape? Here’s another handy use for those cardboard centers that will clean up your desk in the process. Explore the tutorial to see what we mean.

Duct-Tape Picture Frame

This project is easy — and when you’re finished, your picture frame will even stand up on its own. Check out the video below.

Duct-Tape Bag 

It is really good at holding things, both by sticking them together and when it’s made into a bag. Similarly, when the tape is combined with fabric you can make a no-sew case. The best part of this idea finally, is that you can make the case or bag any size you need, and with any type of fun fabric.

Duct-Tape Corner Bookmark

This isn’t your average bookmark. Not only does it hang on to the corner of your book, but it also allows your personality to shine as you choose a print unique to you.

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Doctor Horace Day

Pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA), a key component of adhesive tape variants, was first developed in 1845 by Dr. Horace Day. He made the tape by combining India rubber, pine gum, turpentine, litharge (a yellow lead oxide). As a result, it was the first “rubber-based” adhesive and Dr. Day used it in his practice as a surgical plaster.

Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive

The next major application for a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape came from the auto industry in the 1920s. Two-toned automobiles were becoming increasingly popular. Manufacturers needed an efficient way to produce a clean edge where two colors met, and still maintain the production speed. Each time the areas masked off with paper, held in place with cloth surgical tape, the solvents in the newly-sprayed paint would seep through the cloth causing it to stick to the surface.

Engineer Richard Drew

In 1925 Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company solved this problem with the invention of masking tape. It is a tan paper backing with a rubber adhesive coating which in combination with various oils and resins becomes tacky. Engineer Richard Drew had his hand on the thing.

Drew was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on June 22, 1899. He spent his youth playing banjo in dance halls, eventually earning enough money to attend the University of Minnesota. But he only lasted 18 months in the engineering program. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company soon hired him as a lab tech.

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company

The company was then in the business of manufacturing sandpaper. Consequently, he spent the next two years developing a tape that was sticky yet easy to remove. He experimented with everything from vegetable oil to natural tree gums. A company executive, William McKnight, told Drew to stop messing around and get back to his regular job, which he did, but Drew kept doing tape experiments on his own time.

Scotch Tape Invention

That same year, Drew also came out with his waterproof transparent tape after months of work. The tape took advantage of newly invented cellophane. But the material wasn’t easy to work with, often splitting or tearing in the machine. The adhesive was amber-colored, which ruined the cellophane’s transparency. Afterwards, Drew and his team went on to invent adhesive-coating machines and a new, colorless adhesive. The use of the term Scotch in the name was a pejorative meaning “stingy” in the 1920s and 1930s. It stuck with the brand until today.

New Materials

From this beginning the pressure-sensitive adhesive industry began to grow. Consequently, new tapes were developed and new applications for them were found. Hence, the adhesive component was changed to synthetic rubber compounds. Also, a new transparent backing material developed from regenerated cellulose, called cellophane. In the 1950s cellulose acetate and its copolymers came into use as tape backings. Similarly, synthetic polymers combined with resins came into use as adhesives. Drew died in 1980, at the age of 81. Finally, the National Inventors Board posthumously inducted him into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007.

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