Alex said ... If you can call anything as round as a tube "cut square." I suppose I could have used more apt terms. Hmmm.... If you store your tube upright, you would cut the end of the tube true and, if you store it on its side, you would cut the end plumb.

As for having nails on hand that fit the tube well, I could never cut the end of the tube so that any size nail would fit and that's just my luck - bad. Plus, I've never had a brilliant in my hand. Living 20km from the ocean in a climate that sees frost cycles as often as seven times a week in the late fall and in the early spring makes you cringe at the thought of using anything but hot dipped... no good for plugging tubes of caulking.

Speaking of galvanized, does this piss anybody else off ? Nowadays, all you can find are the newfangled galvanized, smooth as a baby's butt. I guess they are cheaper to manufacture, but they won't bite worth a tinker's compared to the old hot dipped. Driving them toe sucks - see above "frost cycle".... you'd have to drive a heck of a lot of nails to save enough galvanizing to pay for a nail puller.

Anyway, trust me. The tape thing works as well as the screw-on storage caps on the expensive tubes and if you live in a climate like mine, where caulking might sit on the shelf for four to six months of the year, the tape's the clear riggin'.