dscheidt

pyrotechnic patches were in use in the US until the 90s, or very early 2000s. Last holdout industries were ag and industrial/mining stuff. Air pollution controls is what did them in. They are more reliable on less than properly prepared tubes, or at least that's what the claim was.

dscheidt

Snake bites are what the long oval patches in Rema patch kits (I forget the number of the patch) are for. They work well for that, but I usually end up putting a pair of round patches on. they often overlap, but that's no problem, just requires two trips through the clean/sand/glue/dry pipeline.

Andrew R Stewart 

Yes, I do know that but a good reminder for others, thanks. It's an effort that is just past my personal line, unless I'm on a tour and getting hard up. Andy

Duragrouch

I agree with repairing tubes to minimize waste. I never had much luck with the gluey patches. Some of the tips above may help. But I got sold on the Park Tool sticky patches, especially for field patching, love'em. However I have only used them on low pressure (40 PSI) tires. Don't know how well they hold near 100 PSI.

After my last flats, front and rear, finding shelter from pouring rain in a loading dock to change both to spares I carry, the next day I took the old tubes (already had a couple patches each), cut off the valve stem, and put the deflated double-layer tube between the new (to be inflated tube) and the inside of the tire, as extra armor (and way cheaper than plastic strips sold for the job). Haven't had a flat since, over two years now. Mind you, mine is a townie with panniers, 1.75" section width, I don't mind the extra weight. I used to save old tubes for miscellaneous projects, but now I'm saving them to do the same for all the family townie or mountain bikes. I'll skip this on skinny-tire road bikes, but even my racer I long ago put 28mm on for better ride and rim durability, along with touring strength double-socketed rims, I got tired of replacing rims after 3 years due to cracks at the spoke hole (55km ride per day); Those rims last forever, though not long after, I switched to a townie to hold panniers.

BikeLite

At some point, I am gonna play around with tube sealant just for fun.

Andrew R Stewart 

BikeLite- Have fun with sealant. We dislike it at work for a few reasons. I've only personally used it for my touring bike due to riding out west in goat head land. I didn't suffer any flates on the 300ish miles of loaded tour, but no one else did and only a few of us ran sealant. I will swap out the tubes for standard ones soon as this year's tour will be East of the Mississippi to the big pond. Andy

cyccommute 

I didn’t say they didn’t exist, just that they were unnecessary. Even when hot patches were used, they didn’t actually burn a solvent nor did the flame come in direct contact with the rubber. Setting fire to the adhesive was never part of the process and was the result of someone observing the hot patch method and not understanding what was happening during the process.

Edit: from what I can deduce about hot patch kits, the “heat source” seems to have been a phosphorus compound similar to matches.

BikeLite

Andrew, check out this post over at mtbr
https://www.mtbr.com/threads/homemad...#post-10350695
"Having rode pro-enduro for 13 years, OWNING A BICYCLE SHOP, & owning/operating numerous pieces of rubber-tired ag equipment (in rural, southeast Missouri; i.e.: thorns of all nature & size), I find the following to work very well.

All of the opinions/formulas sound plausible, but I’d like to share an older tried-n-true method, as well as a newer one (admittedly semi-plagiarized from a commercial formula).

In the mid ‘70s we started making our motorcycle tube sealant from: low buck, pink, generic, kitchen dish detergent (then a very dense viscosity); glycerin, & isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol (a ratio of a bottle of each was fine). This stuff lasts forever; I still have it in my ‘76 factory works Suzuki PE250 tubes!!! I’ve also been running it (since ‘88) in the front tubes on my 40-horse farm tractor; with locust thorns the size of horseshoe nails having been pulled out of the tires!!!

My new method is to use Palmolive green dish liquid (about the thickest available); glycerin; & isopropyl alky. PLUS, I use polyester (fiberfill type) batting. Another “plugging agent” that can be used instead of the poly-fill is cotton balls or batting. These are essentially the same idea behind the “wadding” mixed into the injectable, bulk Slime.

For SV tube applications, the batting is chopped-up small enough (cut to the size of cotton-swab ends) to be poked into the Schrader valve (with core removed) using the stalk of a cotton swab (or similar “tool”); I then inject the 3-part goo into the tube using either a large syringe, of the veterinary or horse worming paste type. Another great fill tool is a mustard squirt bottle fitted with an old hose-n-coupler off a spent Fix-A-Flat can. For Presta valved tubes inserting the batting is a real bear & ONLY possible on tubes with removable cores (& with smaller pieces of batting, too)! PV tubes would be best done with just the goo, & hope for the best."........

rm -rf

It's an alignment tool for welding custom bike frames.

Andrew R Stewart 

Yes, rm-rf has it right. An Anvil brand. I've built frames since 1977, mostly at a slow hobby pace. This frame building jig is a pleasure to work with. It also is a nice hook for various lesser stuff: Andy

djb

late to the party, but I knew I had some of the old red patches kicking around, but just went and looked but couldnt dig them up. Mine have that jiggly edge thing going on.
I still dont get why people are hesitant to patch--as someone else wrote, its just not right to discard a still useable item, and my patches last for years and years.

Ive told this story before in the touring forum, but a few years ago when I was biking through parts of Mexico, I met a young Canadian guy biking on his way biking down through Central America. As I was at the end of my trip and about to fly home (and as he came across as a sort of innocent clueless sort of young guy) I gave him a bunch of extra patches and new tubes of glue. It was rather comical when I got this stuff out to give him, and when I said, and heres some glue tubes, he had this quizzical look on his face when he said, "glue??" and I knew right away he had never patched a tube in his life. Sure enough, he had brought a few glueless patches and told me that they hadnt been working.
Explained the process to him, actually told him to go on youtube as i figured he'd get the concept better from a screen, but as I occasionally followed his trip down into South America, he commented a few times in his videos that his patching jobs just didnt work, so the poor guy never got the hang of it.....

curbtender

Yes, a little patience goes a long way. Let that glue dry before putting on the patch.

ThermionicScott 

I've always liked the idea of patching parties (read about them from a Jobst Brandt thread way back), but I never have the combination of enough punctured tubes and bikie friends who would be enthusiastic about such a thing. Maybe it was an easier sell back in the day when more people rode tubulars worth saving but were on enough of a budget to consider doing it themselves?

Gresp15C

I still do 'em one at a time, but I appreciate the service to humanity. About the long patches from the Rema kit, I cut them in half and use them as two patches. Not because I'm a tightwad per se, but because it's a last resort when I've run out of the smaller patches.