The Many Uses of Duct Tape

Duct tape was originally developed during World War II in 1942 as a water resistant sealing tape for ammunition cases. Duct tape has many common uses. Here are a few unusual ideas.

If you don’t want to go out and buy a wallet and you have some duct tape, just make one. You would get a long piece of duct tape (about 14 inches) and fold it in half sticky side to sticky side. Make 4 of them and attach them together the long way. Then fold it in half the hot dog way and tape the sides together and then you have a wallet (minus the credit card pockets).

If you were going to be a Spartan or a knight for Halloween, then get some duct tape and make a helmet and armor. Since duct tape is silver, it will have a nice metallic look to it. You could also make a fake spear tip on the end of a stick or a sword by covering a thin board of wood or cardboard.

You could also use it for a prank. When someone is asleep, if they are a heavy sleeper, you could tape them to their bed. This is not very good if you only have one roll of duct tape, because they could get loose easily. If you attempt this, make sure you think of the consequences first, and don’t tape their head!

If you have a lot of duct tape, you can make a boat. You’ll need a wooden frame. You just wrap the outside completely in duct tape. This really works! They tested it on “Mythbusters”. It is pretty impressive how waterproof duct tape is, and how well the boat floats in water when finished.

Here is an idea that is sort of out there. Don’t try this at home, but I think it would be possible to make a bullet-proof vest out of duct tape. You need to find out how many pounds of pressure that one strip of duct tape can handle (64lbs.) and how many pounds of force that the average hand gun bullet has on impact. This would be a great test for the Mythbusters.

These are only five unique uses for duct tape. You could probably find many more uses for it than I did. Use your imagination.


Some facts from Wikipedia and the Mythbusters