‘Ferociously Strong Tape’ is the strap line on the American-made Tyrannosaurus Tape – Roger Bisby tests the claims.
I took some Tyrannosaurus Tape out and about to try it in a variety of different locations and applications. I was told by the manufacturer that, unlike some other tapes, it 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, and 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. 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 it will stick it to the polythene sheeting so it would stand a good chance of staying put for a week or two, and that would be a better bet than sticking it to the brickwork.
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 out 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.
However, I couldn’t 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 18in. above ground. Just as well I couldn’t find 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 2in. 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 with this, or any other tape, we had established something of little value to the end user. The real job for construction tapes is always going to be sticking things down, and making emergency repairs, and Tyrannosaurus Tape does a good job under challenging conditions.
For more information on Shurtape click here.