The Joy of Tape Gunning

There are certain tools that I have bought over the years that are a joy to use.

Sometimes the joy is derived from the fact the tool is well built and reliable like my Makita circular saw. It was a replacement for an inexpensive Craftsman-model that developed problems about 16 years ago.

I also love my Gorilla Gripper, a tool designed to clamp on to cumbersome sheets of building material so you can carry them one-handed. I guarantee that anyone who has ever attempted to carry a four-foot by eight-foot sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood up two flights of stairs without any help would really love this tool.

The joy of a tool sometimes comes from being simply fun to use. I have a few of these. My Craftsman router is fun, extremely messy as is the nature of that type of tool, but very fun. My electric planer -- another messy tool -- is also very fun. My hand-planers that require skills I have never been able to master, are not so fun. Previous attempts to use them usually ended in frustration and are the primary reason I bought the electric model.

I also love my heat-gun. I find it very satisfying to peel off a hundred years of paint using a 1500-watt hand-held blast furnace. I think it's also cool that if I ever needed a hair-dryer in a pinch, I could use it for the job -- on the lowest setting, of course.

I have another gun that I realized the other evening should be added to my personal list of fun tools:

A tape gun.

I have two tape guns. I've had them for years. Really, I should only have one, but at one point during a long ago move, I could not find my first tape gun -- guess I had stuck it in a box -- so I rushed out to buy a new one to finish packing.

Since I haven't moved in the last 17 years, I've only used these tape guns sporadically, primarily to seal up returns to a mail-order retailers.

However, I've recently started selling off various stuff I have accumulated over the years and considering the esoteric nature of the items, decided that eBay would give me the best return. And since eBay means shipping is a virtual certainty, a tape gun becomes a very critical tool.

But I've discovered that I'm a bit of tape fanatic and having access to not one but two tape guns is just encouraging that behavior. Where a single piece of the super-strong two-inch packing tape should be sufficient, I put two or sometimes three. The shipping labels I print out get laminated with a coat of clear packing tape. And any gap in the box where water might possibly leak in gets welded shut with my tape-gun.

I'm probably spending 50 cents in packing tape on items that sold for as little as a buck. I know I should care. That would be the fiscally responsible thing. Using so much tape is siphoning off revenue from my efforts as an eBay entrepreneur.

But I can't help it. I justify the excess in my mind by saying this is for the customer, and even if they only paid a buck for a boxful of books, they're still worthy of 50 cents of packing tape.

However, I know the real reason I pack their purchases so well and it is the simple joy that comes from using a tape gun.