Can you put up a blind with No More Nails? No. You cannot put up a blind with No More Nails and have it work safely and effectively in the usual fashion.
Ok, but can you put up a blind with No More Nails On A Roll? Again, this is a no from me in my opinion as a Blinds Person (blinds person not blind person, though my idea of what constitutes nice shoes might make you wonder).
With that said and in the interests of providing all of the available information you need to make an informed decision, it is my duty to inform you that the parents of both No More Nails and No More Nails On A Roll diverge from this view when it comes to the tape version of their deeply impressive nail substitute that I really rate highly. (UniBond are kind of big, so I’m going to try really hard not to anger them nor to give our legal department, population one, anything to worry about. I’m sure they’re lovely, so I’ll probably be fine…)
Can you put up a blind with No More Nails?
Please. No. I mean, not from my/our point of view, being as mentioned a manufacturer and retailer of blinds; I/we will not honour any warranty for our blinds claimed on as a result of trying to No More Nails-a-blind to a wall.
UniBond, the No More Nails People, also agree that you cannot put up a blind with No More Nails, or more to the point, at no point in their literature or other online works can I find them suggesting that you can, nor recommending it, nor saying yes to any questions along the lines of “can blinds be hung with No More Nails.”
Can you put up a blind with No More Nails On A Roll?
So, EB (English Blinds, us) and UniBond are on the same page up to here. However, it looks like us here at EB and them there at No More Nails (or UniBond, as they prefer to be addressed in formal settings) are potentially going to have a bit of beef from here on out.
UniBond state that their No More Nails Tape – “No More Nails On A Roll” if you will – is “ideal for putting up blinds without drilling holes,” because it “has immediate grip and can support up to 120kg per roll.”
Now, this might sound like the UniBond guys are giving a very definitive “yes” to the aforementioned question of can you put up a blind with No More Nails or not, as long as you use the tape variant, but if you read their blurb again more carefully, there are a few seemingly-innocent caveats there that IMO, might be your downfall…
Taking a closer look at the realities of putting up blinds with No More Nails On A Roll…
First up, the weightbearing claim of No More Nails On A Roll mentioned above – 120kg is a reasonable chunk of heft. 120kg is almost twice my own weight (do not judge me, I’m tall and muscular) and a higher weight than the majority of standard-sized blinds you might buy.
However. Products like No More Nails, No More Nails On A Roll, and those sticky tab things that you can use to hang pictures without drilling holes all stand or fall not just on how much weight they can bear in theory, but also, the suitability of the surface they’re stuck to and/or your ability to prep said surface appropriately to give the product a fighting chance of performing its intended role.
Also. No More Nails On A Roll “can support up to 120kg per roll.” Why am I repeating this? Because up to, and because per roll.
Now, UniBond didn’t actually respond to my email (or at least, have not so far) asking for clarity/less vagueness on these points because you know, they’re busy people and also, it’s a fairly specific question that might in theory have legal implications for them.
Also, I would assume a very specific question like that needs someone fairly high up or techy to answer it, and I would guess that such persons are too busy designing and planning how to make more, better, stickier sticky stuff to field customer service emails from rando’s like me.
For my part then without having had the benefit of their input, I want to state that you should view the caveats UniBond themselves have mentioned for using their product like this with the appropriate degree of respect, and take them very literally.
Supports “up to 120kg” of weight is an almost meaningless statement; what it’s really saying in literal terms is that it will definitely not support 121kg of weight or above, but it is not saying how close to 120kg of weight it will most definitely support, nor for how long.
I do reckon obviously that a product from a big brand like UniBond giving the green light for a specific application of their product means that said product is probably going to do what you want it to do in the majority of reasonable and mainstream scenarios, otherwise the feedback and online rep they’d get would soon sink them.
But I do caution you to bear in mind that “supports up to” actually means in literal terms only “will never support more than,” and doesn’t tell you an accurate weight it will definitely support (nor for how long), which is almost certainly because this can be highly variable, as you might expect.
And finally, let’s not forget the whole “can support up to 120kg per roll” thing too. I’ve highlighted the “per roll” bit because it is this caveat that I reckon is far more likely to cause you/your blinds to come unstuck than the weight issue itself, assuming you’re sticking the blind on a suitable surface and the blind is light.
What this statement means is that the strength of the whole roll can hang (up to) 120kg; so, to get the theoretical highest level of weightbearing the product claims to possess, you need to use the whole roll.
This would be the case if, say, you stuck the whole roll of the tape all over the back of a picture frame, so that the strength of the whole roll supported the item. Cutting off four small segments to stick to the back of the four corners of the frame will support a far lower weight.
In blinds terms then, blind brackets may not have sufficient surface area to them to allow you to use the whole roll of tape, which is apparently 1.5 metres long by 19mm wide; which works out to being 28.5cm square, larger than the surface area of most of the brackets you’ll get with blinds, which are themselves not always flat and smooth on the back face.
So, in the immortal words of Randy Jackson, “that’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.”
But what if you’ve read this far and the tape option still seems to be on the table in terms of weights and surface areas, and the fact that UniBond said you could..?
Can you put up a blind with No More Nails On A Roll and use it as normal?
In terms of functionality and whether or not your blind will actually stay up, can you basically put up a blind with No More Nails On A Roll? UniBond seem to be advocating this and they’re the manufacturer of the product, so the UniBond answer to this is yes, within the parameters that they state as limitations.
Please remember that the above answer is UniBond’s “yes,” not mine though.
Why? Because drilling down now into the level of pedantic semantics that made me really unpopular at school, UniBond state that you can hang a blind with No More Nails On A Roll – but they don’t state that you can use/operate a blind hung with No More Nails On A Roll.
No really, this apparently is the exact hill that I’m willing to die on.
Operating a blind places a level of pressure/weight on its headrail and fixings each time, and also causes movement/vibration, none of which is a problem for blinds affixed with screws; but all of which might well be a problem for any glue or glue tape-related product, particularly when said operation is performed repeatedly, such as if you open and close your blinds morning and night every day.
So really for my money then and erring on the side of caution, can you put up a blind with No More Nails On A Roll and use it as normal? The party line of English Blinds is that we do not recommend using anything other than screws to hang blinds.
That is as much as we’re going to say on the subject, and you won’t get a direct “no” out of us in contradiction of statements made by a company/brand that could literally eat us whole. But I think I’ve made my point…
