Kenneth Finnegan

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EMail: KennethFinnegan2007@GMail.com
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The Story of My Life (Duct Tape Style)

As you probably know by now, I'm the webmaster for this wiki and have written the majority of the tutorials, there being a lack of other people really interested in writing them and actually doing it.
I got started with duct tape the summer of 2004, right after my freshmen year at Fremont High School. I was sitting in my room, bored like usual, and for some reason I had my dad's roll of duct tape in here. I first was taking little pieces of it and folding it on itself (I really was bored) but then progressed up to trying to make my first wallet. It was bad, and I mean BAD... The bill slot was too short to hold bills in it, and it didn't have any card slots. So I made another one, and it wasn't much better. Pretty soon I ended up with like 5 crappy wallets, only 3 of which could even hold money if I had wanted it to.
So then I messed around with the duct tape enough that I finished it and had to go buy more. So I rode my bike to the handy dandy local OSH garden supply store, and low and behold, right next to the duct tape, was red and black duct tape... COOL! So I got a roll of each of those too. I even know what day it was... 9/9/04 I've kept all the receipts for all the duct tape I've ever bought... Kinda sad but interesting at the same time.
So after making a few wallets, and picking up more duct tape, I looked online for instructions on how to make something none-crappy out of duct tape. AKA Duct Tape Club tutorial on how to make a rose. So I made like 12 of those, most of them turning out really really bad, and some fairly good.

After that I pretty much left duct tape alone for awhile. I picked up a few more rolls of green, yellow, and blue, and then really didn't do much. It wasn't until well into my sophomore year that I got bored enough to start up again, and got more serious this time. I asked my dad about getting some sort of work surface, and hit the jackpot. A few years before we had remodeled our kitchen, and as part of getting the new countertop, they had to cut out a piece to make space for the sink, and we still had this piece of countertop. SCORE!!! So that's what I use for most of my work with duct tape, a 2½' by 1½' piece of stone countertop. FYI, cutting on the counter heavily scratches it, so DON'T CUT ON YOUR KITCHEN COUNTER!!! And if you do, DON'T say it was my idea. Mine is scrap leftover.

So then I looked online and found http://www.identi-tape.com/ and talked my dad into buying me $100 worth for my birthday. Granted that that was the only big thing I got that year, but it was good enough to keep me entertained. I've placed a few more orders there since, only one of them being another $100+. My collection is the one you see pictured on the front page. I've picked up a few more rolls since then but it's still pretty accurate.

My favorite thing to do is make posters. This is where you take a base sheet of usually plain grey tape, and cut piece of tape and stick it to the sheet to make a picture. Granted I almost always trace pictures I download off the internet. (I'd love it if anyone would send me their own drawings to trace, just know: no shading, few fine lines (sharpie)) The first thing I did was go out and get a nice exacto knife. They sell those cheap ones for $3 and then the nice rubber grip ones for $6, the extra $3 is well worth it after working with the knife for a few hours... After that I discovered that trying to work on the counter top I had kinda sucked. With all the scratchs and everything on it, the tape didn't peel off very well after cutting it out, so I thought maybe I could use a piece of glass. My dad used to do stained glass and had a box full of random little pieces of glass, So I asked him if I could have a piece, preferably just plain clear. (he had all the textured and color glass, I wanted plain clear) The funny part was when he asked how big I wanted it, I said "Ohhh... maybe like 8 inches by 8 inches..." So he pulls out his tape measure, pulls out the first piece of clear glass he finds, and low and behold, IT WAS 8" BY 8"!!! Save us the trouble of having to cut a bigger piece... I then coated the edges with electrical tape to no cut myself and later figured out spraying the glass with WD-40 is a good idea to help the tape peel off better. Many times I'll cut a real small detailed piece, then pull it apart when trying to lift it off the glass. Even the glass still scratches some times, so DON'T DO THIS ON YOUR WINDOWS!!!

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