Duct tape or duck tape?
I had always assumed that it was properly called duct tape; I suppose I thought it was used in some ducting activities or construction. And I thought 'duck tape' was a simple, and not very clever, mispronunciation of that.
Turns out that the original tape was sticky stuff on a duck canvas or cloth (duck being a variation on the Dutch word 'doek'). 'Duct tape' appeared in the 60s, a gazillion years after 'duck tape' was invented.
So there you are, it's actually 'duck tape'.
You're welcome. Every day a school day.
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Duct tape isn't ever used for its intended purpose...
But it DOES seal quacks in ducks
Duct tape - nah - I've always found Sellotape to be the clear winner.
Duct tape is really the Force in Star Wars. It has a light side, a dark side and it holds the universe together.
Duct tape don't fix stupid, but it definitely muffles the sound.
I've stretched the point too far.
Coat!
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No, no, no. Gaffer tape is a whole 'nuvver thing, innit.
It's matte, whereas duck tape is reflective, and it pulls off surfaces without leaving mess or damage. Also you can tear it, but duck tape usually needs cutting.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 25 Jun 20 at 04:00
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>> Cheers for that Gaffer.
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The black tape? Always known it as bodge tape.
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If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck...
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Long familiar with term 'cotton duck' as a form of canvas used in the sort of saddlebags the 'old boys' used when I first started cycle touring around 1980/81. I guess that's the same derivation from dutch as in the original tape.
Were I pressed I'd have assumed Duck Tape to be a brand. There's a roll of such tape in both my cars for 'get you home' type fixing of loose stuff.
There is of course an old joke about duck/duct tape and WD40:
www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/7214525854
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Works well on warts/verrucae
www.nottinghameczema.org.uk/documents/using-duct-tape-to-clear-viral-warts.pdf
Last edited by: Lygonos on Thu 25 Jun 20 at 11:50
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>> Were I pressed I'd have assumed Duck Tape to be a brand. There's a roll
>> of such tape in both my cars for 'get you home' type fixing of loose
>> stuff.
>>
Always useful, I "mended" the brakes on my daughter's golf last week.
(Light plastic vacuum hose for the servo had come adrift at a push fit connection)
Usually have a can of 4x40 and a roll of insulating tape as part of the get you home kit, much less useful on modern engines where I cannot usually work out which pipe/wire is which :-)
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In the early 70's I fixed a leak in the petrol pipe of my Hillman Avenger with chewing gum and elastoplast from a forecourt shop when petrol started leaking as I was filling up ...it was around 6 monrhs before I got round to fitting a proper replacement pipe.
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I’ve got duck tape wrapped around both my trekking poles. Hope I never have to use it in an emergency.
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>>In the early 70's I fixed a leak in the petrol pipe of my Hillman Avenger with chewing gum and Elastoplast...
In the early 90s I repaired a rusty filler pipe (big hole in it letting water and shecht into the fuel tank) on a Rover SD1 with a beer can (Tennents Lager iirc) split longitudinally, some zip-ties, and Isopon P40 fibreglass filler.
Lasted until it's cylinder head went mental.
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>>s (Tennents Lager iirc) split longitudinally...
Penny, Heather or Karen?
;-)
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...can you not remember which one split longitudinally.....?
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>> By that time (about 1993-94) the "lager lovelies" were no more.
As I've recorded here before Mrs B and I are addicted to the Western Isles and particularly Harris.
Our first visit was in 1984, just before the Isles Council went on the offensive over the locals habit with waste. We arrived on the Ullapool to Stornoway ferry to discover that we'd bitten off a bit more than we could chew with the bike ride to Stockinish Youth Hostel on Harris. My memory of the slog down the spinal road along Lewis is of the ditches full of broken glass and rusting beer cans. Roughly an equal mix of Tennent's lovelies and McEwans together with the odd 80/- ale Most croft houses were surrounded by decrepit cars an machinery in varying states of degradation to iron oxide.
Eventually made the Youth Hostel about 21:00 but fortunately still daylight in late May. Saw more than one person on roadside fields hand milking a cow into a steel pail.
Our final hour waiting for the ferry was close to where the Harris Distillery is now watching a few Terns dipping around in the air and the tide creeping up a Ford engine dumped on the shore. The ferry, like the present on was named Hebrides but this one dated from 1964. Cars and pedal cycles loaded by driving onto a lift which then lowered onto the garage deck. Poor bloke driving the Triumph Acclaim which shared the lift with us was wearing a kilt and the vigorous wheel turning and clutch shifting meant he was in danger of provding an answer to the 'is anything worn' question.
We must have loved it though because we returned a year or two later, by which time the 'tidy up' was complete. Since then we've made a couple of dozen further visits and will return again post Covid.
That was meant to be an anecdote about lager cans but became a travelogue. I'm supposed to be working but people needing help claiming Universal Credit seem few and far between so I'm bored as well.
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Brompt, I was supposed to be flying into Barra this summer, a birthday present from my wife. Oh well, will need to wait till next year.
Re your comment on decrepit cars, I was shocked when we were last over (about 5 years ago) the amount of rusting machinery, cars and tractors (and caravans) that were rotting away in the grounds of farms and cottages.
We would still love to cycle the OE - problem is you can take your bike on train to Oban and then across but there is no train at Ullapool when you cross back from Stornoway!
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And to keep it on topic, when we went it was our first camping trip so we had a car full of every eventuality , from spare air beds to a sack of charcoal that would have kept me going for a month (and never got used).
Included was a roll of Duck Tape which we didn't need to use but did offer it to a camper in Stornoway whose tent pole had snapped!
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I was also struck by the number of discarded whisky bottles and beer cans when walking on Harris. the place certainly has an alcohol problem. Those long dark winters I guess.
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>> Lasted until it's cylinder head went mental.
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It was an SD1 cant have been more than three hours.
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>>It was an SD1 cant have been more than three hours
Aye, 2.6 6cyl - another BL "could have beens" - deliberately held back as it could easily have surpassed the 3.5 V8 for power output but then they couldn't pretend the 3.5 was the Halo car.
www.aronline.co.uk/engines/engines-rover-sd1-six/
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>> The black tape? Always known it as bodge tape.
It's also available in other colours. I've seen gaffer tape in grey, and yellow before.
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How bored am I? - VxFan
