Burning Tape

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Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.

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Burning Tape


I thought I wrote this article in the past? Couldn't find it just now so here it is again. If someone can find it let me know? Thanks....


To be extra careful, I'm going to place the adhesive tape against my shirt a few times to attract some fuzz and fiber off the shirt and onto the adhesive thereby reducing it's stickiness and thus it's adhesive strength. This is called,

Burning the tape



How to burn tape
Burning tape is an old school term for removing some of the stickiness to the adhesive of new tape by placing the tape against you t-shirt or jeans. The adhesive pulls off just a little bit of fuzz from your shirt or jeans and this weakens the grip strength of the adhesive before you place the tape on to car paint.

Burning tape on my Autogeek T-shirt

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Now I place the painters tape down and carefully work my way to cover all of the grill.

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Why to burn tape?
To prevent you from accidentally pulling paint off a body panel when you pull the tape off. (Don't ask me how I know)

This is mostly an issue when working on lesser quality re-paints and not factory paint. Because you never know the quality of a re-paint from a body shop it's better safe than sorry.

Also, brand new painter's tape if it gets warm before you remove it, for example if you're buffing out a car on a warm or hot day, the adhesive from the tape can form a better or stronger grab onto the paint.

So consider burning your tape when taping off a car.

Also see,


Video: How to tape-off car trim before machine polishing

Tip: How to pull tape off car paint

Tape it off and avoid a lifetime of ugly...

Tips on Taping Off Thin Paint and Chipped Paint



:)
 
Always wondered about this. I assume that this helps with not leaving behind any trace of adhesive on the paint if the tape was on the surface too long?
 
Smokinss said:
I assume that this helps with not leaving behind any trace of adhesive on the paint if the tape was on the surface too long?
Click to expand...

Sure it helps but the primary importance would be not pulling paint off the car.

There's always a residue line of polish where the tape was placed but no so much actual adhesive residue.



I usually remove all the tape before the last polishing step and let the last polishing step remove the residue lines.

Or...

I remove all the tape before the machine waxing step and let the machine waxing step remove the residue lines.



:)
 
Here's a related article that shows a technique that's important to both know and use when removing tape off of anyone's car...

Especially if the car has been repainted.

Tip: How to pull tape off car paint



Always remove tape by pulling back at a low angle, don't remove tape by pulling it "up" and away from the paint...
(Don't ask me how I know)
CoralsHonda022.jpg


:xyxthumbs:
 
Mike, sorry to bump an old thread but i figured i'd ask you this:

sometimes, i'll tape something off and be working in a tight area where the pad will hit the tape and pull some residue onto the work area. or after i pull it off, because the pad was hitting the spot, some residue will remain. it has always done this for me with 3M green so i tried 3M yellow - same thing (even worse, actually). and because it's a tight area, it's hard to use continuous pieces (a natural adhesive smearing deterrent!)

this is a particular issue on b pillar trim! and, because many times that surface is SO soft and sensitive to everything, you can't treat it like paint and take a blue shop towel soaked in prep solvent and lightly and carefully wipe the areas. a lot of b-pillars will scratch with that technique.

do you waste a high quality towel with prep solvent? reason i say "waste" is i can't imagine the adhesive residue will come off of the towel easily when cleaning towels.

i'm curious what you think, thanks.
 
builthatch said:
Mike, sorry to bump an old thread but i figured i'd ask you this:
Click to expand...

Never feel bad to bump an older thread. I know some forums frown on this and in fact some forum software has an option to close and old thread automatically.

Not this forum.

There's no such thing as an old thread if the information is accurate and relevant.

Heck... even I bump old threads...



builthatch said:
sometimes, i'll tape something off and be working in a tight area where the pad will hit the tape and pull some residue onto the work area.
Click to expand...

I don't use or even like to use the word hate but I'm with you on this.... I hate it when I'm buffing and I pull tape adhesive into my buffing area.


builthatch said:
or after i pull it off, because the pad was hitting the spot, some residue will remain. it has always done this for me with 3M green so i tried 3M yellow - same thing (even worse, actually). and because it's a tight area, it's hard to use continuous pieces (a natural adhesive smearing deterrent!)
Click to expand...

100% agree with all of the above and experience it too....



builthatch said:
this is a particular issue on b pillar trim! and, because many times that surface is SO soft and sensitive to everything, you can't treat it like paint and take a blue shop towel soaked in prep solvent and lightly and carefully wipe the areas. a lot of b-pillars will scratch with that technique.
Click to expand...

Yep....


builthatch said:
do you waste a high quality towel with prep solvent? reason i say "waste" is i can't imagine the adhesive residue will come off of the towel easily when cleaning towels.

i'm curious what you think, thanks.
Click to expand...


Nope... I don't waste a high quality microfiber towel for tasks like this... I use what I call a utility towel for jobs like this and then wash them only with other utility towels.

My utility towels are the less costly towels that are not the type of towels I would wipe a show car wax off of a show car. For me these are the green and blue towels we sell an AG. Now I could use these to wipe wax off a show car but I tend to use and dedicate the much thicker and much higher quality towels for those jobs and you see in all my write-ups....


Pictures from Autogeek's Car of the Week


Take for example, the last write-up I posted...

1938 Plymouth Sedan Streetrod Extreme Makeover!


How to carefully remove a coat of wax


First up I demonstrated how NOT to use a microfiber towel to wipe-off wax...



Don't scrunch-up your microfiber towel and wipe this way...

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Don't lay your microfiber towel flat and wipe this way...

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Do fold your microfiber towel 4-ways
Do fold your microfiber towel 4 ways and then place your hand on top of the towel grasping the edges of one side between your thumb and hand to grip the folded towel and then carefully wipe off the wax.

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Then after a quick lesson everyone works together to wipe off the Blackfire Midnight Sun Carnauba Paste Wax.

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The towels you see being used for this project are the very nice rolled edge green microfiber towels.


For doing work like you're talking about I use towels like these,

Blue All Purpose Microfiber Towels = 3 Pack

I usually don't take a lot of pictures of doing what I call the grunt work but next time I'm doing grunt work I'll take a picture or two...


:)
 
And for the record....

I had all the guys burning their tape before placing it on the 1974 Plymouth Satellite Sebring when we worked with Dennis Gage for this project....

Autogeek's Pro Detail Team in Kentucky!


Fresh Air Grills
That's David aka Truetech74 taping off the fresh air grills on the hood. Before we work on any classic or muscle car with fresh air grills I always inspect the area UNDERNEATH the fresh air grill for compound and polish splatter because most people don't tape-off and cover these openings.

The problem is for most cars, there's no way to get in there and remove the splatter dots so they are there forever and they are unsightly.

I pointed these fresh are grills out to everyone and lucky for Jaine, no one has ever splatted product down behind them in the past and our team certainly wasn't going to be the first to do it.

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Protecting Vinyl Graphics
Here's Billy carefully taping off the outer edges of the vinyl graphics so we didn't harm them or get polish residue jammed against the edges.

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Edges, Raised Body Line & Corners
For all edges, raised body lines and sharp corners we used 3M Blue Vinyl Tape to cover and protect these.

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And I'm happy to say... there were no mistakes....

;
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:)
 
On the topic of "burning" the tape, its a really simple solution I have never thought about. It seems most painter's tape these days is really sticky and some "low adhesive" tape I recently tried didn't stick as hard, but did leave some nasty adhesive goo behind.

Now that I occasionally work on cars that aren't my own, I'm taping more and this should help quite a bit.
 
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