Should you Caulk Your Tape? Is Caulking Your Tape Professional?

This paint life TV, I'm Chris Y. Idaho Painter. In this video, I'm going to talk about whether your tape needs to be caulked or not. So that is a controversial subject. I've posted plenty of videos out there on caulking your tape. So does it actually need to be caulked or not? Some of that depends on the surface you're painting on applying your tape on and it also depends on to some extent what tape you are using. So if you want to know if you should caulk your tape, stay tuned for this video. But before we do that, if you haven't subscribed to this video or subscribed to our channel, paint life TV, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell. You've got to hit the notification bell because it doesn't do anything if you subscribe and not notify. All it's going to do is give you an email every time we come out of the new video. Nobody's ever going to market to you. Nobody's going to try to sell you anything. It's simple, free, easy to do and it's just a simple way to help support making these free videos. All right, so I got some tapes in front of me and I'm going to show you some of the different technology in the tapes. I've got frog tape, orange, blue, yellow, and green in front of me. And the green and yellow and blue have a technology on them called paint walk technology. And it has a polymer on the outside edge of the tape that actually swells up and doesn't allow liquids, essentially paint to bleed underneath it and give you jagged lines. So do you need to cock your tape or not? So if you're using inexpensive painters tapes that don't have this technology on it, you're more likely going to have paint bleed underneath the surface unless you're on an extremely smooth surface. Now, bleeding under than tape is kind of has some relation to do with whether you're on a really smooth surface like glass, then your tape can get a really good adhesion and you're not going to have any peaks and valleys and voids. But if you're on a rough surface like a kind of like an orange peel textured surface and you're applying your tape across that, that's not a smooth surface and you're going to have some peaks and valleys and voids in the tape edge and that's going to allow paint to bleed underneath. Now, if you're using a really good tape like frog tape, that polymer is going to swell up and it's going to fill in those peaks and valleys and voids. Now, if you've got a really rough surface, that's where cocking does come into play because it aids in that and filling those gaps and voids along with the polymer. I'm going to show you the difference in the tape here and what that polymer does in the fact that actually has and why you'd want to use a painter's tape that has that polymer. So, I've got three tapes. These tapes right here, the blue, green and orange. This is frog tape, delicate tape, frog tape, multiple surface tape right here, blue tape and this is a professional tape that comes in a multi-pack and not individually packed. The green and yellow come individually packed and they're a little bit more expensive. But once you see this polymer, you'll realize why frog tape is more expensive than typical production tapes or everyday tapes or even more expensive than your average blue tape. This is a production tape right here. This is frog tape orange. This does not have the polymer on the outside edge of the tape that swells up. This is a lot cheaper. It's an everyday production tape. If you're not worried about having really crisp clean lines, then that's the tape you'll want to use. But if you're concerned about paint bleeding underneath the surface, getting on your floors, getting on the glass on French doors, on windows. If you're trying to do a perfectly straight line on a wall, that's not an extremely smooth wall. Like knockdown texture or orange peel texture, these are the tapes you're going to want to use. Now I'm going to show you a demonstration of this polymer. This will give you a really good visual of why this tape is so important to getting good crisp lines and stopping paint bleeding underneath the tape. So I'm going to get this show you a polymer right here, an example of this polymer and what it does. All right, now I have some of the polymer. This is a polymer that is basically the exact same polymer that goes on the outside edge of your frog tape. I'm going to show you giving a really good visual of what's actually happening when a paint or liquid actually hits this tape. Now here's a tip or trick when you're using frog tape. You can pre-wet your tape. I'm just taking a wet rag, wipe it over the tape, and I know a lot of professional painters do this. It pre-swells the tape. So that way it's pre-swollen. So you're even more or less likely to have paint bleed underneath the tape. I've never really done that, but I know a lot of painters do it, and it is a pretty good tip to do. So wiping your tape down with a just very lightly damp rag will pre-swell it. So here's the polymer. We got a tiny bit of that polymer inside this cup. You're going to see how much it actually swells. When I put some water, I'm going to fill the cup with water. It's going to happen pretty fast. It's going to swell up pretty dang fast, absorb all that water. So I've got a cup full of water in there, and it's absorbing the water already. I can now take and turn it upside down, and you can see there's no more liquid. It's just the polymer left, and that's what it looks like. So it's all swollen up right here, and that's what that polymer is actually doing. It's swelling up, absorbing any liquid, not allowing it to bleed underneath the tape. Very simple concept right there. So that polymer technology, that's a patented technology called paint block technology. So frog tape is the only tape in the world that can apply this product to the outside edge of the tape, and that's why with frog tape, you're paying more money, but you're guaranteed to get really crisp, clean lines. All right, now I'm going to show you, give you a demonstration, dropping a little drop of water onto these tapes right here. We've got frog tape production, grade tape. This does not have the polymer on it. We've got frog tape, delicate tape. We've got frog tape, green multiple surface tape, and then we've got frog tape, Progresh professional grade blue tape, and that's packaged in four packs, which is a lot less expensive, or a little bit less expensive than your other tapes, because it's individually packed. So here we go. I've got a dropper. I'm just going to put a drop of water on here. We'll see how fast this swells out. Put a drop of water right there. You can see now on this tape, I don't want to, my wet hands that's already swollen. It's got a little dot of swollen polymer right on the edge of that tape. The water, along with this, might be a little bit hard to see right there, but there's a really good visual. All three of them got a little dot of swollen polymer right here. We'll show you on the orange tape, what happens. Put a drop of water, and you can see the drop of water is still just a drop of water. So not all blue tapes are equal. So there's going to be a difference in quality of tapes, just like there's a difference in quality of paints out there. So I've got two different blue tapes. This is frog tape blue, and this is another competitor frog, or not frog tape, but it's a blue painter's tape. So why would you use frog tape blue? Well, let me show you right here. I'm going to put a drop of water on each one of these, and this one competitor claims that you can get crisp, clean, straight lines with their tape. It's going to put a drop of water on both of them. You can see right here frog tape blue, right here. Here's the polymer right there on that one swollen. You can see right there that's the polymer swollen. This is still water liquid on the edge of the tape, and that's the technology that makes frog tape superior to getting crisp, clean lines when painting on rough surfaces. So there you have it. There's a little bit about the technology that's involved with frog tape products, and why a lot of times you don't have to caulk your tape, because it has that polymer on the outside of the edge. If you're using production tape that doesn't have the polymer, and you want really crisp, clean lines, and you're not on say a smooth surface like glass, you're definitely going to want to caulk your tape. And I have multiple videos out there caulking your tape with clear caulking and white caulking and how you can get laser straight lines. But if you're on smooth surfaces like glass smooth walls, it's up that's not rough. Frog tape with this paint block technology, the yellow, green, and blue are excellent. And I'll give you amazing crisp, clean lines. If you have any experience with using these tapes, you'll just let us know down in the comments section below. We'd love to hear about your experience and what kind of crisp, clean lines that you're getting with the tape. If you've got any tapes that you're used out there that are your favorite tapes, let us know in the comments section below. Once again, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell that way you get notified every time we come up with a new video. And don't forget, give us a thumbs up if you've learned anything from this video, or if you've enjoyed the video. And like we always say, we'll see you on our next video out.