College print duct tape by Duck brand!

Check out the new college print duct tapes by Duck brand! Be sure to keep an eye out for these designs in your local stores or get it online through the Duck brand website!

http://www.duckbrand.com/Products/duck-tape/college-duck-tape.aspx

The history of the item we call "Duct tape"

The Real History of Duct Tape

During World War II, the American armed forces needed a strong, waterproof tape to keep moisture out of ammunition cases. Because it was waterproof, everyone referred to it as "duck" tape (now a brand name of Manco). This versatile tape was used as a mending material that could be ripped by hand and used to make quick repairs to jeeps, aircraft, and other military equipment. The Johnson and Johnson Company's Permacel division, which had by then developed its own line of adhesive tapes, helped the war effort by combining cloth mesh (which rips easily) with a rubber-based adhesive, and then gave that combination of rubberized, waterproof coating. (No specific person or group of people at Johnson and Johnson have been named in the development of duct tape. Don't ask them... they don't know.)

Following the war, housing in the United States boomed, and many new homes featured forced-air heating and air-conditioning units that relied on duct work to distribute warmth and coolness. Johnson and Johnson's strong military tape made the perfect material for binding and repairing the duct work. By changing the color of the tape's rubberized top coat from Army green to sheet metal gray, "duct" tape was born.

From Duct Tape Book Two - Real Stories, by Jim and Tim
©1996 Tim Nyberg Creative, Inc.

The Story Behind Ducttapestuff

The story behind Ducttapestuff dates all the way back to 2003 when one of my friends showed me a wallet that he had made out of duct tape. I complimented him on how neat it was and I knew that I had to give it a shot. A little while later I got a roll of red duct tape (it was actually Scotch brand) and tried my hand at making a wallet. It probably would have been a lot easier if I had looked online on how to make a wallet before trying it out but instead I broke down the process of how it had to be done in my head and then started sticking pieces of tape together. I ended up with a pretty wrinkled wallet with no credit card holders (I would learn these later, also without looking at any directions/videos.) You can check out my first wallet in "Collections Volume 1" on the Youtube channel. I perfected my design and then made an all black wallet which I use to this day. From 2003 to 2008 I tinkered with duct tape and various ways of making things out of it. I taught several classes at summer camps on how to make wallets out of tape and some of these classes had 30-40 people! In October of 2008 I got an idea for making a Youtube channel to showcase tutorials that I would come up with and then post for others to see. On November 7th, 2008 the channel was born and on November 28th my first video on how to make flowers out of tape was posted. The rest, of course, is history.

The Sonic character wallets

A while back I decided to make a Sonic the Hedgehog wallet and the design became so popular that I eventually made three more characters from the Sonic universe. All four of these wallets are made by a form of decoration that I refer to as "puzzle decoration." Puzzle decoration involves cutting out several different pieces of duct tape which are pieced together like a puzzle to form a more complex picture or design.

Check out the Sonic poll on the left side of the blog and vote for your favorite character wallet!

If you would like to learn how to pull off puzzle decoration on your own, check out this tutorial on puzzle decoration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny7AerNi9O8

My Favorite Duct Tape Story - It's Out of this World

Duct tape saved Apollo 17 moonbuggy, while on the moon.

On the NASA website today, a tale in praise of the many merits of duct tape when one is on the moon with a busted buggy:

The date was Dec. 11, 1972. Astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt had just landed their lunar module Challenger in a beautiful mountain-ringed valley named Taurus-Littrow on the edge of the Sea of Serenity. (...)

Cernan: "Okay. I can't say I'm very adept at putting fenders back on. But I sure don't want to start without it. I'm just going to put a couple of pieces of good old-fashioned American gray tape on it...(and) see whether we can't make sure it stays."

In spite of his thick gloves, Cernan managed to unroll and tear off the needed pieces, but moondust foiled his first repair:

Cernan: "…good old-fashioned gray tape doesn't want to stick very well." (At a post flight briefing he explained: "Because there was dust on everything, once you got a piece of tape off the roll, the first thing the tape stuck to was dust; and then it didn't stick to anything else.")

His second attempt succeeded, however. "I am done!" crowed Cernan. "If that fender stays on ... I'd like some sort of mending award." And with that, they were off.