Which sticky tape is the strongest

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Gifts for Teens. Gifts for Everyone. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Kyle Schurman. Duct tape is a seriously handy tool to keep around the house that can repair a lot more than you think. But if you want to make sure the repair work you're doing will last as long as possible, the toughest and best duct tape on the market is Black Gorilla Tape. You'll pay a little more for it, but it's worth the cost.

Loading Something is loading. Email address. Popular Reviews. Insider Reviews' All-Time Best list. Black Friday deals available now. Is the Dyson Airwrap worth the cost? Compared to the other general-use tapes we tested, it has the strongest adhesive and the highest material strength, yet at It also has some stretch, so it tightly forms against sharp corners and edges.

It has great adherence to a wide range of surfaces, including wood, glass, poly and concrete. It unwinds easily from the roll and tears in a nice, clean, straight line with no annoying strands unwinding along the outer edge. Duck Max Strength is a co-extruded tape, and during all of our testing, it never showed any signs of delamination or other structural failings. Of the general-use tapes, the Duck Max Strength consistently got the highest marks in strength testing, especially in material strength and adhesion to masonry.

In those categories, it was at least 10 pounds stronger than the next tape. Adhesion to wood was a closer competition, but Duck still won out.

It also held to the piece of glass better than the rest. Duck Max Strength has a material strength of 62 pounds, so a doubled-up piece should be able to hold upwards of pounds and a tripled piece pounds.

The special-use duct tapes all had higher numbers, topped by the pounds of Gorilla, but those tapes had other failings. The exterior sample boards show Duck Max Strength to be durable in the elements, but only on a temporary basis.

Like most of the other tapes, after seven months, it had released the block of wood and the pieces holding the poly sheet were long gone. It was still holding to the plywood, but there was significant curling at the edges, proving that it can hold up to a little outdoor use, but that there are better options for long-term fixes.

Duck Max Strength also held to the piece of glass after being heated to degrees better than the rest of the general use tapes. The trade-off is that it left the most residue of all the tapes. The other general-use tapes had very poor tack on the glass but left no residue at all. Duct tape should generally be looked at as a temporary fix. Among the tapes, this one did the best in all of the exterior testing, and after seven months of sitting in a field, it was the only tape that was still attached to all four sample boards.

This is the one to choose for a semi-permanent patch on a hole in your gutter, the rusted-out spot in the truck bed, a fix for a busted lawn rake, or a crack in the the recycling bin. After six weeks, the piece of Sticky Ass on the plywood was still percent adhered. All of the other tapes have at least one corner or edge coming loose.

The same was true for the pieces holding up the poly square. After seven months, the results were even more dramatic. The adhesive on the Sticky Ass had melted some and the poly had slid about a quarter-inch, but it still held firm. Most of the other tapes lost their hold around month four or five, with Scotch All-Weather holding on until month six. The most telling sample board was the one with strips of tape adhered fully to plywood. On this board, Sticky Ass and Gorilla were still fully adhered, while the others were either gone or show dramatic curling, usually along the top edge.

At 13 mil, Sticky Ass is a thicker tape than Duck Max Strength and is stronger in almost every category. The one area where Duck Max Strength was better was in adhesion to masonry, but that was only by a small margin. The trade-offs for all of this extreme weather durability are handling issues. For most jobs, we found ourselves reaching for the easier-to-use Duck Max instead. Compared to the mil Duck Max and the mil Sticky Ass, the IronForce was stiff and difficult to conform to curves and other oddly shaped objects like the boots we tried repairing.

The adhesive was strong, but not enough to make up for the loss of handling. It appears to be hampered by its own structural strength. In both of the adhesion tests, the tape broke before pulling away from the material. On the plus side, the tears well and wraps well. It also holds up to heat and wind almost as well as the Duck. Instead the tape would wrinkle, stretch, and pucker at the rip line, leaving a ragged edge. Despite its relative thinness, it proved to be stronger than some of the mil tapes, but it has too many other drawbacks.

Fresh off the roll, the air pockets in the adhesive are visible. After two weeks, when we removed the tape samples from a plywood board, the Scotch was coming apart, with a significant amount of the mesh separating from the poly backing and adhesive. The Scotch also had the most occurrences of stringy tears.

The tape came off the roll heavily wrinkled and could not sit flat or get a nice seal along the edge. These wrinkles create pockets where wind or rain can penetrate into the tape—we hit one of the sample boards with a hose at medium pressure and the Scotch came right off, while all of the other tapes remained on the board. Duck Advanced is also a 9-mil tape, but it felt much thinner than the Scotch, possibly because of the lack of wrinkles.

After about a week and a half, the strips holding the poly square let go. It was extremely flexible and by far the easiest to wrap, but it was so floppy that it often flopped over on itself.

It took the top spot in every single strength test except for glass. It blew away the competition when it came to material strength, scoring almost 15 pounds higher than the next best and being the only tape to break the hundred-pound mark. Gorilla is so thick that wrapping the pine cone and getting a perfect seal was almost impossible. It is also too stiff to wrap tight around a corner. Gorilla is also not that easy to tear. The mil T-Rex Tape , made by Shurtape the parent company of Duck , is positioned as a direct competitor to Gorilla, even down to the terrifying animal mascot.

In every strength test, Gorilla was stronger. Nashua is the tape that the Mythbusters used to build a bridge and lift a car. In our tests, it proved itself to be nearly as strong as Gorilla, but with the added handling of a mil tape. We thought this tape was a sure winner.

But during our third week of exterior testing, there was a three-day heat wave with two days in the low 90s and a final day in the high 80s. During that time, the piece of that was holding the block of wood began to shift and slide downward. Then the block of wood disengaged from the tape and fell. Polyken Military Grade had the most distinctive adhesive of the tested tapes.

Sometimes the carrier layer is so thin that they are pretty much an adhesive on top of a silicone liner. These tapes are best suited for light adhesion applications. Width varies quite a bit with double-sided tape.

Each type of tape will have several width options to suit your project. Surface energy is the degree of attraction or repulsion force a material exerts on another material. Double-sided tape works best on surfaces with a high surface energy, like glass, glazed tile, and bare metals.

Silicone needs a very tacky adhesive, or one specially formulated to adhere to it. For flat and smooth surfaces like glass, aluminum, and PVC, you can use thinner tape. For rougher surfaces like wood, cement, brick, and stucco, thicker tapes work best. Painted or coated surfaces need thicker, stronger tape as well. The environment plays an important role in the adhesion of double-sided tape. Is the tape for indoor or outdoor use? Some tapes are not designed to hold up in outdoor environments.

For outdoor tapes, the weather impacts adhesion quality. The cooler the temperatures, the weaker the resulting bond will be. Dust, grease, or moisture can also compromise the bond between two surfaces. Double-sided tapes are rated by the maximum load they can hold. In general, thicker tapes hold more weight. Additionally, tapes with acrylic-based glue will hold more weight.

However, the strength of the bond depends on the surface and weight of the object. Adhesive viscosity is similar to liquid viscosity— if it flows easily, it has low viscosity; if it does not, it has high viscosity. However, the viscosity rating for double-sided tape basically determines how well it binds to uneven surfaces. For rough surfaces, a viscous tape is preferable because it will spread into all the nooks and crannies of the uneven surface.

Smooth surfaces do not need tape that is as viscous. Pick a tape that best matches the surface energy of your items and consider the maximum load rate. Double-sided tape is either removable or permanent. The removable variety is meant for temporary use and is easily removed. Permanent tapes are used mostly in industrial manufacturing, but strong tapes are also available for home use. These tapes are typically used in lieu of glue or nails to permanently hold two objects together.

The longevity of the bond depends on how strong the adhesive is, as well as the environment. In climate-controlled environments, most double-sided tapes will hold a bond until you remove it.