ofajen

If you’ve ever wondered what a 72 yard roll of 3/4” wide cotton twill tape looks like, here you go...




Recently arrived from twilltape.com (no affiliation). It was a tad under $17 plus $7 or so for shipping. The tape is much like Newbaum’s except that it is plain tape, no adhesive.

I’ve wrapped both bikes with it now. I used purple, disappearing school glue sticks to glue the tape on. The tape feels great and is staying in place just fine. I wrapped from both ends and tucked the end under the outer side of the lever hood. Takes a few inches less than my wingspan to go bar end to lever and a few inches more than my wingspan to go from clamp area to lever, assuming almost 50% overlap.





So far it seems to be quite a successful experiment! And I still have enough tape to re-wrap both bikes about 7 or 8 more times!

Otto

rosefarts

I figured as much was available somewhere.

3M sticky spray would have been my choice under the tape.

I've been wanting to teach myself how to do the fancy diamond wrap, mosaic or whatever it's called. That takes 4 rolls per bike and once it's shellacked, almost permanent (for a while anyway). Something like this would be great to practice with. I'm certain smaller quantities are available at the fabric store by the foot.

amillhench

I see they have custom printing on their tape.


The gears are turning...

ofajen

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll keep that in mind next time. The glue sticks were handy, so that’s what I went with. And yes, this would be handy to experiment with.

Also, this is the version they sell in lots of colors (36 colors, IIRC). I think it’s middle weight by their reckoning. They also sell a light weight and a heavy weight version in only basic colors like black, white and natural.

Otto

due ruote 

Looks good. Fwiw for estimating - Newbaum’s tape is 10’ rolls and seems plenty generous.

ofajen

I used some Newbaum tape the last time. It’s enough to tape bars, but I have 45 cm bars, and I like to overlap almost halfway and tape all the way up next to the wider center region, so I seem to use nearly 12’ if I have it.

Perhaps more important to a cheerfully low end person like myself, I can get 72 yards for about the same price as less than 7 yards (two rolls) of Newbaum’s!

Otto

luns

The last harlequin wrap that I did was Newbaum's tape over a base of tattered used cork tape, and turned out much nicer than I expected. The cork provides cushioning that the cotton tape didn't, while the cotton was somewhat more durable against cuts and scrapes than the cork. I'd thought of shellacing the tape, but imagine that would either crack and flake off from the flex the cork allows, or stiffen the tape enough to defeat the cushioning.

I did contemplate trying out liquid latex instead of shellac, but never did get to give it a try. I think I'd actually want to soak the tape in liquid latex before wrapping rather than applying it afterwards. I suppose I'd have to find some sort of drum to wind it onto for drying, but this also offers a chance to mix some pigments into the latex that are hopefully more colorfast than Newbaum's dyes.

cjenrick

that looks a lot cheaper than what people are selling on evilbay! thanks for that!

Spence Wolf at Cupertino Bike Shop used to sell neoprene strips that you would put underneath the tape on the tops and drops. What a difference!.

I believe it was 1/4 inch, so when you compressed it with the tape a bit, it would be a little stiffer.

WT160

I'd like to try your idea of wrapping with Newbaum's over cork. Anything to look out for?