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Vintage threads from the first ten years

StewMac bucker tape? any good?

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2/1/2006 5:20 AM
Ben2	StewMac bucker tape? any good? Seems there is another Ben here, I am Ben2. Looking to get into making buckers. I will order some parts from allparts and stewmac. Is the Stewmac.com bucker wrapping tape good?? Is that what Duncan uses on his JB models? Thanks, Ben2

2/1/2006 6:45 AM
Joey	It's OK. Nothing to write home about and I don't think it's what Duncan uses. If enough of us pester 3M, they might start making it as they still make No. 12 tape which is identical in all aspects except it's beige.

2/1/2006 12:53 PM
Gibson Guy	The stew-mac stuff is ok, it doesnt like to stick to itself very well, I have to use a small drop of Crazy glue to hold the end down after wrapping or else it will start unwrapping.

2/1/2006 7:21 PM
Dave Stephens	some of the stew mac tape is electrically conductive which is not a great thing to have wrapped around a coil. its not what duncan uses, it also seems to absorb water from the air or something, if you let a piece of it sit out the adhesive gets real gooey, not sure if that will affect the coil or not. does anyone know someone who works at duncan who could rat this out?

2/2/2006 12:40 PM

This is one of the first subjects I posted about in this forum way back when. Sheldon was looking for some tape then as well. He may have found something since then
I use 3/4" 3M electrical tape and split it in two on a band saw then sand it down to the right width on a 4" wide belt sander. It takes me about 20 minutes but I get two rolls out of it. This stuff never comes undone as long as you don't stretch it too much while wrapping.
If you don't have the necessary machinery...find somebody who does and ask them for a favor.

2/2/2006 8:08 PM
Dave Stephens	Fred there's good tapes out there to use for wrapping coils, the reason everyone wants black paper tape that won't ruin magnet wire is the VINTAGE thing, "vintage correct." Old PAFs and P90s were all wrapped in black paper tape so everyone wants that look. Duncan uses tape we would all love to get our hands on, but no one knows where he gets it.

2/2/2006 11:40 PM

Ah Yes.
Now I remember.
That's what you said last time too and we had the discussion about getting a minimum order from 3M that would last us 3 lifetimes even if 20 of us shared it.

That's what SD does. They've got lots of stuff like that. I was there a few months ago and got the grand tour from Evan Skopp. He showed me several examples of where they would spare no expense to achieve a "vintage correct" replicas. They will order complete mill runs of materials - plastics and Bakelite etc., more than they can ever use and then warehouse them.

Obviously it's worth it when you get to be that big of an enterprise...or maybe that's what it took to become that big.

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