T-rex tape review

Internet searches throw up some funny connections T-Rex tape may take you to this builders tape or it may take you to a story of someone who has discovered some long forgotten music from Marc Bolan. So to clarify this is Tyrannosaurus construction tape. I was told by the manufacturer that, unlike some other tapes, T-rex tape sticks well to brickwork so that was where I started. We have all had those jobs where we need to temporarily weather in a flat roof with polythene before the final roofing material is laid.

It stuck to engineering bricks with no trouble so it would also stick to smooth tiles but a dusty old stock brick is another matter. You have to brush the bricks off before you start in order to get effective adhesion. It doesn’t matter how good your product is it won’t stick to dust, nothing sticks to dust except more dust. If however you have chased the brickwork out ready for the flashing you would do well to poke the tape into the chase and wedge it because it has enough tensile strength not to tear and you can then stick more tape to that. It will also stick it to the polythene sheeting so it would stand a good chance of staying put for a week or two, beyond that you are pushing your luck on a temporary weathering in job.

I found that the tape also sticks very nicely to slate so you can also use it for sticking a tarpaulin across slate provided you also held the tarp down with some boards. All this was interesting but I still hadn’t found a test to see how strong it is. I decided that two scaffold planks taped together over a pit of poisonous snakes would be an eye catching scenario. If the tape failed it would then be between me and the snakes.

I couldn’t actually find a snake pit in Surrey and, I must admit, I didn’t try too hard but in the spirit of this experiment I strapped a couple of bits of 4 x 2 together and wrapped a single turn of tape around them and then stood on the wood a giddy 18 inches above the ground. Just as well I didn’t have the snakes because the tape snapped immediately and I was flat on my back.

The next thing to do was be scientific and double up on the tape and see if that held. It was better but after a few seconds it also snapped. Onwards and upwards, my third attempt was three turns of tape and it held perfectly. It was all going so well until my 6ft 2inches son decided to give it a more severe test by jumping on it. Predictably the tape snapped but at least we had some idea of the breaking point of three turns. Given that you are never going to trust your life to this or any other tape we had established something of little real value to the end user. The real job for construction tapes is always going to be sticking things down and making emergency repairs and for that Tyrannosaurus tape does a good job under challenging conditions.