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Discussion Forum

NEED A BETTER CAULK TUBE TIP!!

pizza | Posted in General Discussion on December 27, 2011 01:20am

Hi. Just wanted to throw this out there as a topic for discussion and HOPEFULLY get the makers of caulk to de-design that tip.

Caulk tube tips are a JOKE.

I’m completely at a loss as to why caulk tube tips have not changed much in decades. You’d think that the tip, once opened could be made to be re-usable without resorting to slitting the tip (cleaning the dried stuff out and re-taping it) or repuncturing all the dried up caulk in there or buying caps that claim to re-seal the tip or what have you..

I imagine that literaly tons of material in those tubes gets wasted and thrown into landfills each and every year simply because those tubes aren’t really made to be re-usable once opened. I’ve used all kinds of ways to try and keep the tip from drying up with it’s caulk in it causing the next time I use it to be completely frustrating.

I really suspect that caulk manufacturers rely on the fact that tubes end up getting clogged and unusable just so you’d have to throw an almost full tube away and buy a new one. More money in their pockets. Almost like an industry scam. 

Seriously? There isn’t a way to make a tip so you can use all of the stuff in the caulk tube? But not all at once. 

Especially for DIYers who might use just a small amount at a time and the next time they need it might be weeks or several months later o even a year later only to find it impossible to get that stuff out neatly like it was the first time they opened it. Or just making the tip so you don’t have to hunt around for a nail long enough to puncture that seal in there.

I think its high time this gets addressed.

I won’t even get into those GREAT STUFF cans. Another joke there. I mean really, who uses ALL of the stuff in those cans everytime they first open it?

Here goes that old lament …….”We can send a man to the moon but we can’t re-use a caulk tube easily once it’s been opened?”

If there are any caulk tube manufacturers reading this, then I throw down this challenge to you…..Why don’t you hire some competent engineer or designer to solve this problem?”

FRUSTRATING!!

 

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Replies

  1. glenn_storey | Dec 27, 2011 03:03pm | #1

    well, i'm not an engineer or a caulking producer, so i can't help you there, as far as the great stuff goes, though, buy the gun. after buying 2 big cans of gun grade foam, it's paid for.

  2. User avater
    MarkH | Dec 27, 2011 05:31pm | #2

    I think the tips are designed to keep people from saving opened tubes.  This increases sales, and profits.

  3. calvin | Dec 27, 2011 05:42pm | #3

    Pizza

    Most......................well, anymore-some of the silicone companies are still using the unscrew tip that you can pull the plug out of.

    I try to buy only that kind since for the most part-it works.

    Titebond's Weathermaster Sealant - they've changed to the above tip style and I commend them .   The product is a good one and it's drawback-it didn't allow reuse much like silicone-once it starts to cure-nope-hardens quickly.

    I wrote to them and mentioned to a couple reps at a trade show-fine for the guy that's going to use it on a housefull of windows, but pity us remodelers..................................don't know it that added to prodding, but they now have the removable tips.

  4. oldhand | Dec 27, 2011 08:11pm | #4

    tough request..

    I'm all for addressing any source of waste but in my career a very, very low precentage of usable caulk has gone to waste.Not to say it can't.

    The nature of the material isn't user friendly to storage.

    Each type of caulk  might require a different applicator design, etc.

    I have more lamented the waste of the expended empty tubes themselves.

  5. DanH | Dec 27, 2011 11:27pm | #5

    There is a trick with duct tape that works for a short period -- a few weeks perhaps -- and works far better than jamming screws into the tip, etc:

    Fold a 3-4" strip of duct tape over the end of the tip, with the fold at right angles to the line of the tip.  Leave perhaps 3/8" between the end of the tip and the fold.  Pinch tightly along the sides, but don't pinch the part of the fold right above the tip.  Then squeeze the gun and create a blob of caulk about 1/2" in diameter in the duct tape.

    A few days later you can remove the duct tape and blob, squeeze once to clear the tip, and you're ready to go.

  6. User avater
    hammer1 | Dec 28, 2011 09:49am | #6

    Once you cut the tip and puncture the seal, air gets to the product and it hardens. You can use a drill bit and drill into the hard caulk, the flutes will load up with the dry material and you can often get the majority cleaned out after a few drillings. You may have to squeeze out a bit and discard it before you get to unaffected caulk.

    1. User avater
      MarkH | Dec 29, 2011 06:59am | #7

      It would be nice if you didn't have to do that.  I'm too cheap to throw away caulk just because it has a clogged nozzle.  I cut the whole end of a tube off once and scraped out the caulk with a putty knife once. Used it to butter the backside of some trim I was installing.

      1. User avater
        hammer1 | Dec 30, 2011 07:15am | #12

        A tube of caulking doesn't cost much, it's part of doing a job. Hardly worth sweating over $3 or $4 worth of unused caulking.

        1. pizza | Jan 11, 2012 10:32am | #16

          Tube of caulk not costing much

          Maybe so but its also about waste and whether we all like it or not we all need to get on board with the fact that the days of buying stuff and just heaving it in the trash because its unusable will be gone. Everything needs to be recyclable-everything.

          We are drowning in our own toxic soup of filth, plastic bits, plastic waste, disgarded oil, residues of and from construction products and the cancers just keep on coming. Just look at those floating islands of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean, those are from people with that same atttude of "heck, I'll just throw it overboard, duh..."  Meanwhile that trash abrades down into smaller bits that get ingested by fish and birds and eventually into the food chain and eventually reaches humans and eventually causes hormonal problems and cancers etc.

          Yeah 3 or 4 bucks doesn't seem like much but when you consider that this is happening to thousands of people across the world those small tubes of half-used cailk start to add up to literally TONS of waste. Yes TONS do the math.

          That attitude of just tossing things because its convenient rather than really thinking about the pollution and damage to this earth you are causing is irresponsible.

          Waste that our children will be dealing with when all of those residues eventually reach the water supplies after leaking out of the landfills.

          Ok I now step down from my soap box.

          1. User avater
            hammer1 | Jan 12, 2012 09:30am | #23

            I totally agree with you, pizza.

  7. KDESIGN | Dec 29, 2011 11:25am | #8

    The solution would be an airtight mechanical sealing cap right on the end of the tube.  That way, any air that was retained after resealing the cap would be in the large mass of product, so it would not easily solidify that large mass and block future dispensing of the product.  Then you would have a separate nozzle that would be attached by a twist connection when the sealing cap is open.  Perhaps both the nozzle and the sealing cap could be threaded to screw on. 

    After use, you would remove the nozzle, clean it, and attach the sealing cap.  A compromise solution would be to use a one-piece, screw-on nozzle like on a glue bottle.  With that, if product solidifies in the nozzle after use, you can unscrew it and pull the hardened product out of it from the back end. 

    The problem is that for every tube that one consumer wants to save partially used, there are thousands of tubes that get fully used in one shot, and then are discarded empty.  So to add a special feature to every tube would drive up the cost of every tube, even when the special feature is not needed most of the time.

    The solution would be to offer the product in two varieties of tubes.  One would be the conventional tube at the normal price, and the other would be a special product-saving tube at a higher price.  That way, the people who buy tubes and use them in one application will not be subsidizing the people who save product after limited use.

    Or a person could get a law passed that requires all tubes be offered with resealing features at whatever cost is necessary.  Such a law would be predicated on the premise that for the greater good of society, resealing tubes are needed to reduce the amount of unused sealing and bonding product going into landfills. 

    Although, you would have to carefully weigh that in order to make sure that the added mass of empty tubes contributed by the special resealing feature was not a larger addition to landfills than the occasional unused product.      

    1. User avater
      MarkH | Dec 29, 2011 11:45am | #9

      I hope no government official reads this.  I can see congress stalemated on the issue and developing a study group on environmental and economic concerns....

      1. DanH | Dec 29, 2011 06:28pm | #10

        CaulkGate!!

        1. User avater
          MarkH | Dec 29, 2011 06:31pm | #11

          Are you joking or being serious?

          I can actually imagine this happening.  The government is starting to scare me.

    2. User avater
      MarkH | Dec 30, 2011 07:27am | #13

      I think a device to save caulk could be sold "as seen on TV".   Maybe an airtight box that hooks to a vacuum sweeper to suck out the air, and save the caulk.  I can hear the commercial now in my head...

      1. KDESIGN | Dec 30, 2011 10:18am | #14

        Paying the Cost

        If caulk manufacturers could make more money by adding product resealing devices to their tubes, I think it is fair to conclude that they would be doing so.  They look at every production and marketing issue very closely.  Perhaps a third party could manufacture a vacuum sealer of some sort that would save caulk.  Then the question is:  Would there be enough demand for it to make it worthwhile to produce?  For that matter, the basic question is this:

        Obviously some consumers want a way to save un-used caulk in the tube after opening it.  If the manufacturers produced a line of product in special resealing tubes at a higher price than the regular tubes, would consumers be willing to pay extra for the resealing tubes? 

        That is the fundamental question for the original poster of this thread.  If a normal tube of caulk costs $5.00, how much more are you willing to pay for the product if it is in a special tube that you can re-seal for an extended amout of time?

        You have challenged the manufacturers to solve the problem.  If you want them to solve it, you have to answer the above question first.

        1. User avater
          MarkH | Dec 30, 2011 12:32pm | #15

          I bought a couple cases of Geocel procolor caulk for a hardi plank install, and the tips unscrew from the tube, I believe there were caps that snapped on the tip, but you also could screw an unopened tip on the tubes as a cap  Extra tips and caps were in the box. 

          Geocel is a nice company to deal with, and the caulk I bought was heavily discounted and was sold on eBay.  The manufacturer wanted to sell off caulk that was nearing expiration, but it still had a year left, and some got used a couple years after expiration, and it was still good.

          It's a nice caulk, but is not water soluable.  50 year warranty, paintable if you want to.

        2. pizza | Jan 11, 2012 10:46am | #17

          Your straying a away from the KISS principle here

          NO, no, no, no....KISS=Keep it simple stupid.

          No SPECIAL caulk tubes!! I don't see any reason why everyone could use the same re-designed tube both diyers and contractors. JUST re-design the tube tip. It's only a small bit of plastic to re-mold. In volume it probably would be 1-2 pennies in actuall plastic to injection mold or something. Yes, marketing would see the opportunity here to talk it up and make it seem like something special and jack up the price to "justify" it when in reality it really didn't cost them anything.

          And the tube ends up being the same price as we pay today. I believe it can be done wand without a markup for using the "special" tube. Give me a break.

          I lay this out there and it turns into a way to make more money for somebody rather than helping. Jeez.

          1. florida | Jan 11, 2012 08:47pm | #18

            The history of the world is that people "help" becasue they can make money doing so.

          2. User avater
            coonass | Jan 11, 2012 09:19pm | #19

            florida,

            This tip is free.

            Put a screw in the tip and wrap with electrical tape. Last a long time. Quick and easy.

            KK

          3. KDESIGN | Jan 12, 2012 01:18am | #20

            Pizza,

            Nobody is talking about redesigning the whole tube.  You say they should only change the tube tip.  What is the problem with the tip? 

            The problem you have described is the material hardening after the tube has been opened, and the hardening begins in the tip where it is hard to clean out for further use of the tube. 

            The basic problem is that when you break the seal in a new tube, air gets into the product.  And it is also hard to recreate a seal as effective as the factory seal.  But even if you could re-seal the tube as good as the factory seal, there will still be air left in the tube after the first use. 

            The chemistry inside the tube of product starts to change the instant you break the seal.  Reversing that change after you have used some of the product would be a highly technical problem. 

            You say to just spend a couple pennies to add a little plastic to the injection molded tip.  If you have the answer, why don't you tell us exactly what to change about that tip? 

          4. calvin | Jan 12, 2012 05:44am | #21

            It's been done.

            The removable tip that used to be on most silicone caulk tubes.  Allowed you to remove the tip and pull out the plug.

            It would bring several weeks to the use of an opened tube. 

            It's the days crap out even with care that is the most aggravating.  You know you have that type or color in te van, no need to run for a new tube.  Days after opening and you find it hard as a rock.

          5. DanH | Jan 12, 2012 07:05am | #22

            Of course another solution is smaller tubes.

  8. berni45 | Jan 29, 2012 06:51pm | #24

    Screw on plastic cauk tube tip

    I purchased a four piece screw on cauk tube tip about ten years ago probably from an end of aisle rack in Home Depot or possibly Hacienda in New Mexico. It is made from black PVC.

    The bottom piece screwed onto a cut/pierced std cauk nozzle. It has a 45 degree precut nozzle 3/8" dia.

    The second piece screwed onto the bottom piece. It has a 45 degree precut nozzle 1/4" dia

    The third piece screwed onto the second piece. It has a 45 degree precut nozzle 1/8" dia.

    The fourth piece is a screw on cap.

    I do have a photo and hope it is attached below..

    Reason for post - two fold - one is they do, or did, make the piece you are all searching for. second - if anyone knows who sells it now please let me know!

    1. DanH | Jan 29, 2012 07:28pm | #25

      I think I bought a set like that 5-10 years back.  No idea where it is now.

      But note that plastic is not vapor-tight.  The seal in a tube of caulk is foil, and once you break that foil it's hard to prevent the caulk from going bad.

    2. rwjiudice | Jan 29, 2012 09:09pm | #26

      Saw these YESTERDAY at my local Westlake ACE hardware!!!!!!

  9. User avater
    user-152047 | Feb 04, 2012 01:28pm | #27

    Caulk condoms

    Lee Valley sells rubber "condoms" for caulk, they're a couple bucks for 25. Work better than anything else I've tried. Make sure to squeeze alittle caulk out and roll the cap down. Latex caulk will rub off the cap, polyurethane doesn't.

  10. Fonzie777 | Feb 04, 2012 08:04pm | #28

    AGREE

    I pretty much agree with you "pizza" that a redesign is in order and would be well received.  I also prefer the tubes with the screw on nozzle, especially high grade silicone.  I've tried a lot of cap methods over the years.  The most recent cap I have used for probably 3 years is made from 4 inch pieces of 1/2 pvc heated with a heat gun and pushed over a wood template then cooled.  My theory is that it's good to keep light from setting the caulk up too.

    The wood template is sized so that after the caps are shaped they stay on the nozzles pretty well and are easy to remove and replace (with a flared opening) and also easy to make.  Sometimes opened caulk tubes stay in the drawer for quite a while so I have a wire hooked on the plastic cap that I can pull down and hook over the bottom of the tube.  That's a new thing I'm trying.

    Two weeks ago the nozzle of a new tube (silicone latex) got busted from throwing it in the freezables bucket, so when we were finishing a good tube of silicone - latex I cut off the front of the bad tube, cut off the front 2 inches of the spent tube with the good nozzel, reached in and pulled out the plunger-pusher with needle nose pliers, heated up the plastic a little with the heat gun and pushed it on.  I hated to waste it.

    The only other complaint I would add to your list is what I call the "million dollar bubble" - that makes the tube "weep" until you pass the bubble.  Maybe that's unavoidable I don't know.  The new "no weep" caulk guns help a little but not completely - so I keep the plastic caps ready to replace on weepers.

    I would like it if they offered the silicone latex tubes all with screw on nozzles and offer additional length options and a short screw on cap.  

  11. Keith Roberts | Feb 06, 2012 04:39pm | #29

    Caulking tube tip cover

    I posted today on this subject.There is a solution.It's called 2BLOK. Works on foam can applicator straws too !Go to 2BLOK.com

  12. kkaneda2 | Jun 08, 2016 06:00pm | #30

    I put screw in and tape around it... now I cannot get screw out...took top off but cannot use nozzle.. now what?

    1. User avater
      MarkH | Jun 08, 2016 06:48pm | #31

      Open up wallet and buy a new tube of caulk. 

      Or cut the tube of caulk open and use a butter knife to spread caulk into whatever needs caulked.

      Or cut open tube of caulk, put the caulk into sandwich bag, zip sandwich bag up, cut corner off sandwich bag and squeze caulk through the open corner of the sandwich bag.

      Or just shoot the caulk tube with 12 gauge shotgun and drink a beer, and feel happy the caulk is fucxzd!

    2. calvin | Jun 09, 2016 05:47am | #32

      Geez

      Hook the screw with the claw of your hammer and give it a pull.

    3. DanH | Jun 09, 2016 08:03am | #33

      I've had far better luck with my duct tape scheme.  Skip the screw and just squeeze a blob of caulk into the tape.

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