In article ,
John McWilliams wrote:
Despite having used it for many years I've never heard the apostrophe
added. It's gaffer tape.

Kinda like "Can peas" or "Tin peas" in a sense. I'm sure many call it so
without the possessive, but if it's used mostly by gaffers, it should be
in the form I put it. Unless there is a widely used verb (by those in
the Biz.) "to gaff".

The 'gaffer' is the charge hand electrician on a film etc crew. And only
really one per unit. With a large crew on a big rig he is more likely to
delegate the jobs needed to be done than do them himself - like any good
crew chief. Organise the work among his crew to prevent two doing the same
job - or the lazy ones doing nothing.
Perhaps the primary use of gaffer tape these days is fixing filters to
window frames etc. But I dunno if that was the original intended use -
although old I'm not *that* old. ;-)
But the same tape is equally used by other crafts within the trade - even
although others also have their own tape, like camera tape, fairly
similar to gaffer in construction in that it's fabric reinforced but 1"
wide and white and originally used to seal film tins.

--
*I started out with nothing... and I still have most of it.

Dave Plowman London SW
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