Can you tear tape with your hands? Flexibility and resistance
How can you use insulating tape effectively?
It isn’t only electricians who use this special adhesive tape. Even those who don’t work with electrical systems professionally may, in fact, need to use this useful tool for repairs around the home, in the event of appliances or electrical wire failure in your home.
But be careful: electricity is no joke. A repair done incorrectly could also cause dangerous consequences, such as damage to the appliance in question, damage to the domestic electrical system or, even worse, damage to the person themselves.
Therefore, it is best not only to buy quality insulation tape, but also to be certain you know how to use it correctly. Those who have never used electrical tape before could, for example, wonder if electrical tape can be torn with their hands: let’s have analyse if this is the right way to use it together.
Insulating tape, in short
Everyone knows what insulating tape is. It is a roll of adhesive tape with only one surface provided with glue.
The specific nature of this tape lies not so much in the glue used, but in the support instead.
Unlike other types of adhesive tape, such as masking paper tape, insulation tape has a low conductivity support.
Ordinary insulating tape achieves this result thanks to a thin layer of PVC, a material that works well as an insulator: as it is well known, plastic materials are, in fact, generally good insulators, and also used to cover the handles of pliers and screwdrivers that electricians use.
That said, let’s find out together if insulating tape can be torn with your hands or if you should use any special tools.
Can tape be torn with your hands?
To figure out if insulating tape can be torn with your hands, just do a brief experiment: lift a piece of tape from the roll, try unrolling about ten centimetres of it, and then try to tear it with your hands.
When you’re dealing with paper tape, you can simply grab a piece of it with your thumb and index finger or with both hands and, using some force to pull in the opposite direction, try to tear the tape. The cut will certainly not be perfect, but it will be easy to get a piece of tape you can use.
When you need to get a piece of insulating tape, which cannot be torn using this method, things are different. It is possible, however, to tear insulating tape by “pulling” it, using strong traction strength.
This way, it will be possible to tear off a piece of insulating tape which, however, will look “elongated”, and will leave behind a stretched section in what is left on the roll too, creating with creases as well. You could think to use this “basic” technique to repair a thread, without using scissors or cutters as well; as it will become apparent, however, this technique is not ideal.
How to use insulating tape to repair an electrical cable
Suppose you have an electrical cable in your hands with slight and superficial damage. To repair it, you can use insulating tape. You will then need to start applying the tape a few centimetres away from the damaged part, wrapping it around itself, then proceeding towards the “hole” continuing to overlay half of the tape’s width over the previous layer.
To make the insulating tape adhere to perfection and make it more effective, it is recommended to keep it firmly stretched, thus “pulling” the insulating tape while you apply it by wrapping around the wire.
It is, in fact, an elastic kind of tape, which responds to traction strength by becoming slightly narrower (typically up to 75% of the original width).
Proceed that way so until you have covered the entire section you need to fix, even reaching a few inches beyond the damaged part.
When you will get to the last layer of insulating tape, to make sure that it doesn’t come off, it will be best to stop “pulling” the tape, leaving it taut but not stretched, without changing its underlaying structure; doing the opposite, in fact, will cause the insulating tape to tend to revert to its original structure shortly after, losing its grip to the cable and compromising the long-term tightness of the repair job.
Because if this, it is best not to break insulating tape with your hands, using too much “traction strength” on it: it is much better to use a scissors or a cutter, to guarantee a clean and fast cut, as well as to have the insulating tape perfectly adhere to the cable.
It’s best to use scissors or cutters
We have concluded, then that yes, insulating tape can easily be broken simply using your hands, but that this is also not the ideal technique you should use on this type of adhesive tape. Never stretch the last layer of insulating tape!
