CAMPING TIPS - In Praise of Duct Tape!

All experienced campers carry with them a box of varying size which contains all manner of bits and pieces and spare parts. These are items they have found they either can't do without or which are bound to come in handy some day.

The contents vary enormously ranging from rubber bands, grommets, spare jets for gas appliances, batteries, superglue, mantles, safety pins, bits of wire, screws, spare fluro tubes and bulbs, a sewing kit, bits of flyscreen, insulation tape (perhaps some of our readers could add to the list?) and the one item carried by all really experienced campers - duct tape!

Duct tape - also called "furnace tape" or "silver tape" to ease the confusion when the uninitiated think you're saying "duck" tape - deserves to be included with paper clips and needle nose pliers on everyone's list of handiest inventions. The tape came into common use around the early 1940s to replace the old system of using thin asbestos and paper wrapped or glued around furnace ducts.

Modern duct tape is so convenient and inexpensive we tend to be cavalier about its use, forgetting that in the old days emergency repairs to camping equipment and canoes required an alchemist's knack for concoctions and that repair kits included strips of rubber, packages of zinc oxide and white lead.

Today with a roll of duct tape and a little ingenuity it is possible to repair even the most seriously damaged canoe, paddle, axe handle, fishing rod, tent, fly screen, sleeping bag, raincoat, backpack, lilo, boots, chair and damaged muffler or exhaust to name but a few.

And of course duct type is ideally suited to repair tarps which today are mostly silver. But don't wait until your new tarp is damaged before using duct tape on it because the most common damage to tarps is caused by grommets pulling out. So before you next use your tarp put about 8 inches of duct tape along and across the tarp as close to the grommets as possible, especially in the corners to give it added strength.