When I was a kid my Dad would keep a roll of #33 hidden in a high cupboard in his shop, and leave the cheap stuff for the kids to waste. Great tape.DDavid wrote:I hate cheap electrical tape period. 3M #33 is all I'll use given a choice.
There's a local hardware store called "Mac's" that sells rolls of plumbing tape as electrical tape. Normally, the stuff comes in a roll that's several feet wide, and it's used for wrapping pipes. Somehow these Macs people get it cut into smaller rolls. It looks and feels like electrical tape, but it really isn't. The primary problem with it, as far as I've seen, is that the adhesive on it will melt into wire insulation and cause it to become sticky... forever. I've also noticed that certain kinds of masking tape can do this, but I've never figured out exactly which.
Last night, I raided a signmaker's dumpster. I found some cutoffs from large rolls of 3M application tape called "SCP-3". It reminds me of freezer paper --- paper on one side, slightly plasticky. On on the other side, there's this weird adhesive that has less tack than masking tape, but more than painter's tape. It barely sticks to anything, but if you stick it to itself, the adhesive will actually debond from the paper backing. Interesting stuff.