Jumbo Tape Dispenser

Where did I put the tape?

I have tape for wrapping pipes, green tape for painting, carpet tape for holding wood together, duct tape and I am sure a few others.

So they are all sitting in a box on a ledge in the garage.  Of course the one I want is always at the bottom.

So this idea for a #tape dispenser was a great way for me to organize them.  They cut the slots with a router, but if you do not have one they you can use a chisel for this.  It does not have to look pretty, just functional.

Again you can, but do not need to be fancy with the joints.  A simple box joint will do.

Put all you tape in one tall pile on your bench and measure how high it is and then add 1 inch for each roll of tape and 1 inch for good luck and that is how long it needs to be.

Take your biggest tape and measure its width and add 2 inches for larger rolls and now you have your width.

This box can also be adapted to hold your wax paper.  I use a lot of that to prevent glue, paint or whatever I am doing from marking up my bench.

 

I have five or six different kinds of tape in my shop, and last weekend I got fed up with rooting through a drawer to find the one I wanted. To solve the problem, I built this tape dispenser that holds a variety of tape widths and types.

I made my dispenser from scraps of 3/4-in. birch lumber but plywood will work. Almost all regular-size rolls of tape have a  3-in. center hole, so the same size filler block will work for most rolls.

I made my filler blocks 2-3/16-in. square and rounded the corners until I got a tight fit inside the roll. The axle was simply a 3/4-in. dowel. The axle fits into a slot in the dividers. I cut the slots on my router table using a 3/4-in.-dia. straight bit. They are 1/4-in. deep and 1-1/2-in. long.