^^^^^ What he said. My feeling has been that removing shellacked cotton bar tape is actually a little easier than removing unshellacked cotton tape. Consider laying down a cheap plastic drop cloth underneath your workspace first, though.

Don't cut it, and don't assume you can't re-use it. How wabi-sabi do you want to get with this? If you're into that sort of thing, you have an opportunity here. I don't know about the Harlequin pattern taping, but I do know that the bar tape seen in this 2014 picture -

[IMG]Handlebar tape after a dozen years by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

- was originally orange Tressostar wrapped on a set of Nitto model 185s in 44 cm in late 2002. I periodically touched it up and kept on riding along, though eventually the top of the two layers got nicely worn through. This picture shows the less-worn right side at the nine year mark.

[IMG]Looking down, January 18, 2010 by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

In 2013 I swapped out the stem, which required that I unwrap ONE side. I re-wrapped the original tape and slathered on the Bullseye shellac and resumed riding. Then later that year the bike fell over just right, just enough to bend the bars - so I replaced them with a set of Nitto 176s in 42cm, unwrapping and re-wrapping the original bar tape AGAIN, this time on both sides. I took the opportunity to tweak the tape a little bit, hence the asymmetry of the left side wrap, and coated it with shellac.

Finally, there's this shot of the most damaged area, taken at the 15-year mark -

[IMG]Shellacked Tresso at 15 by Russ Fitzgerald, on Flickr[/IMG]

- of the single worst area on these bars. I may do some excessively Grant Peterson twining there and shellac the lot and keep on going, out of the pure cussedness of maintaining bar tape far beyond its normal life. I am sure that someday my children will seek this post out to use the photos as evidence for my commitment hearing.