The Magic Properties of Parcel Tape

It is well known by cherub sailors that parcel tape is a vital accessory to laminating because resin doen't stick to it. I witnesed this at the January Sticky weekend. At the same event I was introduced to the properties of heat shrink tape which we used to consolidate the carbon boom that we were making.

Well I wanted to make a strong carbon tiller for Slippery When Wet but couldn't get any heat shrink tape at short notice to consolidate the lay up.

Sarah and I (Phil Kirk) conducted an experiment by heating a number of household tapes to see if they would shrink. We were excited to see that the parcel tape had these properties. Normal Heat shrink does not have a sticky side allowing excess resin to ooze out of the laminate. The parcel tape was also a little thin and wrinkled under tension. To overcome both issues we ellected to stick two layers of parcell tape together (sticky sides together)for our tiller construction.

Well the result was that we made a tiller with a fibre weight fraction of 57% which is very close to that achieved when we made the boom at the sticky weekend. The tiller came off the mandrell (a PVC Pipe) very easily so no problems there.

The only issue is that I made it the tilelr a bit too strong and it weighs 385 gramms! I don't think the 800 gramm Tri axial cloth which i'd got free from a friend was really neccesary.