Hey Brusier! I'd be glad to help! 1. Yeah, I don't see why not. If it's the kind of foil tape that I'm used to, it has that sticky paper backing, yeah? My only concern would be that the foil *could* maybe, might, potentially come loose-ish; whereas masking tape or similar is a single layer. But that's a small concern, and a really big IF. Since the point of pre-taping is to avoid having to apply cement directly to the foam; as long as you have a higher vinyl-to-rmax contact than you do vinyl-to-tape, then you should be good. I suspect the foil on the tape is probably as good as the foil on the rmax, and that holds just fine. We even swapped out the masking tape at one point for all-weather duct tape and that also did the job.
2. I wanted to have at least 2 inches of contact on each side of the gap so I used 4" wide strips for the tight hinges and 7" wide strips for the loose hinges. My boards were 1.5" thick, so that's where the extra 3" went. After pre-taping, I had about 1.75" of direct vinyl-to-rmax contact and sometimes even closer 2" because of the mitered edge being nearly as wide as my tape. 3. If you can do it, I would do it. Even though the application is more involved, you are essentially making a strong thick "tape". Wherever you would have thought of using tape, VCC will be a good, more permanent solution. The doors on my dome were hinged with vinyl and they worked really well. The great thing about vinyl is that you can choose different thicknesses to suit your needs, and many are nearly crystal clear, perfect for windows. 4. Definitely buy a few yards and cut it really long. That's what I would do if I were you. While it's not entirely frowned upon to use two pieces end to end, you'll need to note that when you pull off any BFT that you *do* end up using, it will be tricky to not pull up the second strip of vinyl a little. Contact cement can be stronger than the adhesive of BFT, but not always, especially if it was tape that didn't have a lot of exposure. 5. Yeah, a hand roller would be brilliant! I'd still recommend to brush on the contact cement, wait a couple mins, then unroll a strip of vinyl onto it, but we did spend a lot of time using our finger nails or glass bottles to press down the vinyl. A little 2-3" hand roller just might be my next bit of gear in my dome maintenance kit. Thanks for the reminder! You'll almost never get all the bubbles out because the glue will be very very tacky. Slowly unrolling the vinyl onto a tacky glue surface is your best chance at fighting lots of bubbles. Any that do form will likely go away as the cement cures. As for the contact cement coming loose, YMMV. Mine hasn't yet and it's just about to be 1 year old, having only ever seen 8 days of sun last year. The contact cement now has a "tan" and is a bit more "Pacific Islander" than "cat pee yellow", but feels just as strong as the day I put it on. The dome only needs small maintenance (due to careless tape cutting/removal) but has no issues otherwise. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hexayurt" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hexayurt+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to hexayurt@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
