Carry Tape Rolls on Your Belt With a Wire Lock Pin

The Problem

Painter's tape, gaffer tape, masking tape — the roll is never where you are. It's on the ladder shelf when you're at the wall, in the other room when you're on the ladder. Belt clips made for tape exist, but film crews — people who hand tape back and forth all day — settled on a five-dollar piece of hardware instead.

The Technique

1. Buy a 5/16" wire lock pin — the D-shaped, spring-loaded locking pin sold in the fastener aisle (about five dollars).
2. Open the spring gate, slide it through your belt, and load your tape rolls onto the pin's long leg. It fits full-size rolls of gaff, painter's, or masking tape, and smaller cores too.
3. Snap the gate closed. Rolls hang at your hip and spin freely on the pin, so pulling a strip one-handed is smooth.
4. Need to hand a roll off? Pop the gate, slide the roll free, lock it back. Quick release is the whole reason this beats a carabiner — no threading rolls over a gate against the spring.

What You'll Need

One 5/16" wire lock pin from the hardware store's fastener aisle. That's the entire bill of materials.