Who needs a tape measure? Just slap down a few rolls’ worth of Red Tape adhesive measuring tape on every surface in your shop and you won’t have to search for where you put the damn tape measure anymore.
With red imprinting on transparent tape, Red Tape has both left- and right-reading scales graduated in increments of 1/16″. The scale repeats every foot, so if you cut the tape somewhere in the middle of the scale the most you’ll lose is one foot. The adhesive adheres well, but can be easily removed with no residue.
As an alternative you can get Pro Tapes Pro-measurement yellow paper tape which has black markings in 1/8″ increments and also has perforations every 12″. You’ll pay $10 for a 165 ft. roll of Red Tape before shipping at Rockler, while Pro Tapes’ version runs $15 shipped for a 150 ft. roll from Amazon.
Red Tape [Corporate Site]
Red Tape [Rockler]
Ruler Tape [Pro Tapes]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
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9 Responses to Fill Your Shop With Red Tape
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This does sound like a rather useful idea. I’ll have to get some and slap it on some of my tools and see how it does.
I can definitely see the appeal of applying this tape to raw materials prior to cutting.
$10 for 55 yards? Not bad!
Getting off the imperial system isn’t going to happen soon, right? 🙂
yea, kinda falls short not having the metric scale on one part of it.
Interesting side note to the comments about imperial vs. metric… California Department of Transportation “went Metric (System International or SI)” seveal years ago for highway and bridge construction. This was based on the federal mandate to “metrify” the U.S. There was so much confusion and complaining from industry that the mandate was relaxed, the DOT standerd was reversed, and now all new designs within Caltrans are to be in U.S. Customary (English) units.
Pretty sweet – I have a couple of magnetic roll tapes, and I’ve glued down a couple of those rolls you get at the sewing store, but I have never seen this before. I thin k it would be a good addition to the bin of ‘jig making’ supplies.
@Mike47:
Yeah, I’m sure the engineers were thrilled with that.
A cheapo alternative to this is some free paper rulers from Ikea and spray glue.
This is something needed for a long time; it’s a great idea. I would like metric units also, since I do most of my woodworking using metric measurements because it’s much easier to do the math.
I have been copying the tape measure on the copier and attaching the paper to packing tape, so this product cuts out a few steps in that process. Printing the tape measure on adhesive paper is another way to do it.
CHECK THE MEASUREMENTS: I bought a roll of this tape and installed it on my compound miter saw. I checked the measurement scale with 3 different tapes at 60″ on the Red Tape. The measurements I got were 58 29/32, 58 15/16, and 58 31/32; that is not a typo, the tape was off 1 1/16″ in 60″. Not going on my tools.