Plain old brown masking tape used to be all that was available. Not anymore, there are blue tapes, and now green FrogTape®. More expensive than the other two, but is it worth it?
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A quick look on a home improvement store’s website will now show a myriad of tapes for all types of surfaces and uses, and well as extended time that that tape can be left in place before removal, as well as solvent resistance, sharpness of cut lines, and how flexible the tape is. However, for many homeowner uses, the three main tapes that many people are familiar with are kraft (tan), blue, and now, green tape (most well known is FrogTape®, made by ShurTech Brands, Inc.).
Masking tape is used in a variety of industries and can be used for all sorts of uses at home as well. Let’s look at the three main types.
The brown tape that has been around the longest is the cheapest to make, so its price is the lowest. But economy comes at a price - it isn’t very strong, and the adhesive dries out pretty rapidly after the tape is applied. If the masking isn’t removed shortly after installation, it is tricky and undependable to remove.
Blue tapes, most commonly made and distributed by 3M®, have found wide acceptance. More expensive than the previous tan product, it also offers advantages such as strength, thickness and flexibility, visibility, better sealing ability for better paint cut lines, and extended time for removal of the tape. This tape has certainly found plenty of uses in our home and shop.
Green masking tapes are a relative newcomer to the market and have become quite popular for all their enhanced masking abilities. These don’t come without a higher price tag, though. When this episode was filmed, the price for a roll of .94 inch wide by 60 yds. long tape for FrogTape® was $7.74, 3M® blue was $3.86, and tan kraft paper tape was $2.98.
That means the tan kraft tape is 21 cents per square ft., the blue tape is 27¢ per sq. ft., and the green tape is 55¢ per sq. ft.
So, is FrogTape® worth it? You’ll need to decide, but it does deliver on its promise of sealing the edge of the tape better and resisting paint bleed under the edge. It certainly is visible, making it difficult to leave something taped that was supposed to be unmasked. We asked our friend Kenny, who is a professional house painter what his opinion of Frog Tape is. He said, “it’s really worth it!”
Having said that, you can bump up the sealing performance of other tapes by running a light bead of caulk on the edge (say, along the intersecting corner of door casing and the wall), getting the painting done, and removing the masking shortly (within a few hours or less) thereafter.
People have gotten very good results with properly applied tan kraft paper tape for many years. Proper application means carefully placing the edge of the tape where protection from painting is needed and pressing down the edge well over a surface that is smooth, dry, and not dusty. Increased performance can be had with both the tan and blue tapes by putting a thin bead of caulk over the edge, and wiping it down so that only a thin coat of caulk remains. Once dry, painting is done, and the tape is removed within a couple of hours.
FrogTape® stacks the odds of success in your favor by having a superior adhesive that seals the edge better and can stay in place longer without the adhesive drying out or seizing the surface it is applied to. Having said that, no tape does well being exposed to direct sunlight for several hours or even days.
The bottom line? Use the tape best suited for the job, including how fast you can remove the tape - the sooner the better. As for us, we’ll use FrogTape on critical trim jobs, but will use the blue tape for most of what we do.
JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
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Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
It's time to paint your house.
And you go down to the home improvement store,
walk in the paint aisle,
and you're going to get supplies,
including tape to mask off areas.
And you encounter this kind and this blue kind.
And then you see this newcomer called FrogTape.
And when you compare the prices,
oh, this is about two to three dollars a roll.
This is about three to four.
And this is almost eight.
Is the FrogTape worth it?
Stick around and you'll find out.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
All tapes are not created equal.
For years, you've seen this regular craft type paper tape.
It's served many of us very well for a long time.
One of the big things about this is it dries out
pretty quickly when it's in use,
but also just sitting on the shelf
or in the drawer ready to be used.
This one you're also familiar with,
this blue tape that was introduced by 3M and Scotch.
This has become really mostly our go-to tape around here.
And we use it for all our masking.
In the maker shop, it's really a great tape.
And it can stay on the job a little bit longer
before it dries out.
And it tears off real cleanly
when it comes time to remove it in most cases.
We'll talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes.
Now, this is the newcomer, the FrogTape.
And the FrogTape is significantly more expensive,
but what it does is pretty doggone impressive.
I asked a professional painter,
a friend of mine named Kenny,
who owns his own painting company,
is FrogTape worth it?
And he says, you betcha it's worth it.
In some of the applications
where the tape's gonna be on for a while
or it's very critical that paint not leak under the edge
and there's a very clean edge
where it's not convenient for them just to hand cut,
this is his go-to tape
and feels it's a real labor saver.
Whatever he spends on the tape itself
translates to labor saving on the other side.
And it's a real bargain as far as he's concerned.
So what makes this tape different?
Well, number one, the adhesive on it
is a polymer type of adhesive.
And so it stays on the job longer
and doesn't dry out as fast.
Also, when it's applied to a surface and pressed down,
it kind of really seals the edge tightly
so that you get very little leakage under the edge.
Now, don't take my word for it.
We're actually gonna put these to work here
on a sample piece of drywall
that's been painted to simulate
the wall inside of your house,
just standard semi-gloss paint.
And we're gonna apply all three tapes
and then paint over it
and then see what the results are.
All right, as we go to apply these three tapes,
it should be noted that the enemy of any tape is sunshine,
where there's direct heat,
UV that dries out the adhesive,
makes the paper brittle.
And the more expensive the tape,
the longer it can take those conditions.
But you don't wanna leave a lot of tape
just out in the sun
or out in the elements for a long time.
You're courting trouble
when it comes time to tear that tape off.
On these kind of tapes,
it'll probably just fall into shreds
and you'll end up really spending a lot of time
scraping it off
or using something like goof off to get it off.
And you would just really,
this is a false economy if you've done that.
So all of these also dry out over a period of time.
And notice that FrogTape
actually provides a storage container
that you can put this tape in when you're done
that prolongs its life
and keeps adhesive moist and ready to go.
All right, for our test,
what we're gonna do
is just take this 24 by 24 piece of drywall
that's been painted, primed and painted.
Actually, it was a combo primer paint.
And we're gonna put two strips
of each of the tapes on this
so that we have multiple tests
to make sure that we don't have a one-off problem
with any one of them.
So I'm putting these tapes here.
I'm just finger pressing that on.
There's that one.
Let's go ahead and use our blue tape now.
We'll move it more out here in the middle.
Now we have these three tapes.
Now I'm gonna differentiate this a little bit more
because even inexpensive tapes
can be helped a bit by a couple practices.
Number one, up here,
I'm just gonna use hand pressure
and do like that, okay?
But down here about halfway and down,
let's just say like right there and down,
I'm gonna take a putty knife
and smooth those down like that.
Now, the rougher the surface,
the more you need to press on the tape
to cut off the edge.
But I'm just gonna do that on each of these
to see if we get any difference
between the top half and the bottom half
when we paint all over this.
Before we actually roll paint on this,
I wanna point out one other practice you can do
that can actually jump up the performance of any tape.
Let's suppose just for sake of argument or demonstration
that this is a wall in your house.
Here's a piece of casing or trim
that goes around your door.
And what you're wanting to do
is lay tape right alongside it like that, okay?
Or over on this one, a little harder to see.
And you've masked that right along the edge like that.
One thing you can do to jump up the performance
is use a latex caulk like this.
This happens to be just DAPS, Alex brand.
Put a very small bead of caulk right along the edge
where you're trying to trim.
Use a wet finger, either with water or off your tongue,
and then you're just gonna smooth that in
and create this little gullet of a very thin wipe coat.
You don't want a bead showing up.
It's just a very thin wipe coat.
Let it dry.
Do your painting on the trim down to this.
And then when it's time to pull the tape,
pull the tape back at a 45 and down away
and tear a nice clean line.
And you can get some better performance
with whatever tape you're using
if you're having a problem right along a molding edge.
All right, let's continue with our test here.
We now have these three different types,
a double tape in each one.
Let's go ahead and roll some paint over the top of this
and let it dry and come back and see our results.
Okay, we've now coated these strips of tape here.
We're gonna let this dry several hours.
Then we'll come back and pull the tapes.
And I'm gonna show you a technique
of pulling the tape for better results.
Let's see what we get.
Okay, we're back.
It's been about four hours.
This paint has had plenty of opportunity to dry well.
And we put this in the same order we did before.
This is our regular paper tape.
Here's our blue tape on this side.
Here is the frog tape.
And we used just a coating of other latex dark paint
to see the results that we get.
Now I'm gonna pull this back,
but I wanna give you a tip when we do this.
This is another thing that pros know about.
And that is when you pull tape,
you do not pull straight away or perpendicular
or at a high angle to the wall.
So let's put this up here and show you.
If this was on the wall,
you do not pull straight out this way.
That's courting trouble.
Many times it'll pull the substrate off
or pull some of the paint that's stuck to it.
Whenever you pull, you pull at a low angle,
down like this or at an angle and pull.
And that way you're breaking away the adhesive
right at the surface, right there,
instead of pulling off or pulling the substrate down below.
So we're gonna go ahead and pull that.
You can see, I gotta keep that angle.
And then there we have a clean removal of that tape.
Let's do it again.
Here we go, down low.
And right there, there was a nick.
So you can see that didn't pull off real cleanly.
So here we go.
We're gonna pull down low again at an angle.
And you can see right away, this is the craft paper tape.
No, we didn't sabotage this and nick the corners.
This is just straight off the roll.
And by the way, it's a brand new roll.
So it's not as strong.
So there we go.
That are the two stripes pulled.
And remember the top half,
we simply put our fingers and wiped it down.
Look at the leak back that you see along the corners.
Notice the bottom half where I use the putty knife blade
and burnish the tape much cleaner.
So that's just something to take away right away
that you saw firsthand.
Now let's go to the second one.
This is the blue tape and we did two columns
just to double check our results.
Again, we're gonna go down here.
Well, this was just hand pressed on.
We're pulling down at that hard angle.
And again, you have better results at the bottom
where we use the putty knife and burnished it.
Look how clean these lines are
compared to where you have a little bit of leak back occurring.
And let's just double check and see.
Do we have the same thing?
Here's leak back from me just hand burnishing it.
About the halfway point, we went to the putty knife burnish.
And again, you can see the results are pretty nice.
All right.
Now let's see if we get a substantial difference.
I'm gonna learn something with you right now.
As we do this, let's go ahead and pull this off.
This was just where we burnished it by hand on the top.
Notice though that it definitely is cleaner
than these over here where we just did the hand wipe on it.
Let's see what it gets when we get to the bottom.
Well, now we're getting some really clean lines.
Wow. That is impressive.
Let's go over here to the same thing.
Just see if we get a consistent result.
Top half, a little bit of bleed back showing right in this area here.
Let's get to the bottom half and see what we get.
Well, that is pretty doggone clear that there is a difference.
And I'll tell you what you can't see on camera
is this tape has a more substantial feel to it,
certainly than the kraft paper,
and even a little bit more than the blue tape.
Well, if it's results you're after
and you don't want to do a bunch of double work,
I'd say there's a difference with the FrogTape
with that specialty adhesive
and the heavier construction of the paper that they're using.
Not bad at all.
You know, something else that you may want to learn how to do
is to use spray paint well.
Check out this video where we show you how to get great results
using spray finishes and spray paint.
And then check out this other video down here also
that we produce just for you
and YouTubers presenting for your enjoyment.
Hey, thanks for joining me today in the shop.
This is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.
