Every template room has two tape drawers. The double-sided tape drawer builds the template; the kraft cloth tape drawer finishes it. Unglamorous, constantly consumed, and the reason finished templates feel finished. Here is what the single-sided drawer does and how to stock it.
The three jobs
Edging. A CNC-cut PVC edge is clean but hard-cornered; on a template handled hundreds of times a shift, raw edges scratch hands and shave fibers off fabric. A run of kraft cloth tape wrapped over the border rounds it off — the single biggest feel-of-quality upgrade a template gets, and standard practice on anything that leaves the bench. (Where it fits in the build: how to make a sewing template.)
Hinging light flaps. Small covers and sight flaps hinge perfectly well on a strip of cloth tape — faster to apply and replace than a taped double-sided joint, and easily renewed at rebuild. Heavier working flaps still belong to double-sided cloth or mesh construction.
Labeling and coding. Style, operation, size, date — written on a tape patch that peels clean at rebuild time. And the red/yellow choice is not cosmetic: rooms assign colors to lines, sizes or operations, and a wrong-color template is visible from across the floor before it produces a wrong-size batch.
Specs and stocking
Both red-adhesive and yellow cloth bases come in 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50 mm widths, 18 m rolls, cartoned 63–162 rolls by width (full table). A practical stock: 25 mm as the edging workhorse, 40 mm for thick-stack wraps and labels — two widths cover most rooms, one carton each, reordered with the quarterly shipment.
The reinforcement tier: fiberglass mesh
Single-sided fiberglass mesh tape (25–40 mm, 30 m rolls) is the strength option in the same drawer: glass filaments embedded in the tape resist the tearing that eventually kills plain cloth tape at stress points. Use it to back hinge lines that see heavy cycling, to bridge and stabilize a field crack until a template can be rebuilt, and to reinforce narrow template necks and cutouts that flex in handling. It is a small-volume, high-value item — one carton lasts a long time and saves templates that would otherwise be scrapped mid-season.
One drawer, one order
Kraft tapes, mesh tape and the structural double-sided rolls consolidate into the same accessories cartons in any shipment — the freight difference of stocking generously is negligible, and the full accessories checklist shows where each tape sits in the complete kit. Setting up a room from zero? The template room guide includes the tape starter list; send your monthly template volume and we will size the carton mix.
