Being a contrarian does not always mean foolishly taking action when many experienced people advise against. At least, not before the deed has been done.

Honestly, I hate cleaning brushes from this, so I just use those super cheap foam brushes and just know that I'm going to use (and dispose of) at least one of them per coat. 3-5 coats is still cheaper than a nice brush and I don't have the hassle of cleaning or the need to dispose of the thinner. I have to say that I'm not going for a perfectly smooth, flawless finish though.

I'm putting too fine a point on this but speaking of brushes and cleaning them: I have used (and tossed) plenty of cheap foam "brushes" but when used with some solvent-based finishes the foam can "melt" which makes a lot more mess than they prevent!

One advantage with shellac is the nearly-as-cheap "chip brushes" have china bristles and work well enough for coating handlebar tape and twine with shellac. I apply several coats close enough apart (takes only 1/2 hour to one hour between coats) that I just park the brushes with bristles in a jar with enough shellac to keep them wet, or the same but wet with alcohol instead.

If you go cheap and use drugstore isopropyl as cleaner (me too sometimes) buy the 90% solution and remember you risk adding water into your shellac if you don't get that out of the bristles but a tiny bit won't spoil your tape/twine. Lower solutions (70% and 50% isopropyl) are fine as cleaners but not for adding to shellac you plan to keep.

After you apply your final coat you can toss that chip brush without cleaning, just as you would with foam, but I bet it holds up better.

First thin coat of clear = at least has nailed the desired shade of yellow. First impression is success. Brushed on.


And a nice imperial touring saddle for a touring bike

Just finished (mostly) this bike - more pics in this thread:

YAP (yet another project): Claud Butler Velox S

This is amber shellac, about 8 coats of a 1-lb cut and 4 coats of something a bit heavier over some thin cotton twill tape got from a fabric store - a left-over bit is tied around the bars to show the change in colour. It took about 2 meters per side - wrapped from the levers to the tops, back down to the end of the drops and then up to the levers again.

The lever clamps were fixed with sticky tape and the bars were wrapped without the levers attached, this makes things MUCH easier, until it's time to get the levers back on the clamps. A bit of squishy foam behind the fixing nut helps keep it away from the bar so the screw in the lever body will grab it, but these still took a bit of swearing.

First attempt with shellac (& whip-tied twine). Eight or so coats of thinned 'clear' shellac from a can and a couple coats straight. I'll probably put another coat or two on. Considerably darkened the dark-brown Nubaums cotton tape- looks almost black, unless one looks closely. Next time I'll got with the lighter brown tape.... Or maybe white with a bunch of amber coats...

BTWs: this guy has a possibly-quite-literal ton of Shellac supplies:

https://www.shellac.net/

I buy restoration stuff for pianos/instruments (some wind instruments use shellac buttons to glue on pads) from him. Excellent quality flakes.

If you want to darken the yellow tape, get some amber shellac.

The clear shellac is, well,... clear.

oh yeah, I love this place! I used to have it bookmarked but lost a huge library of those, so glad to be able to add his site, again.
My friend who lives "over in the next valley" goes directly to the brick-n-mortar shop to buy, but I have yet to visit Napa in recent times...maybe soon.

I've found that "clear" shellac has an amber tint to it. Put it on white tape and it won't be white.

[MENTION=114373]northbend[/MENTION] taught me a trick for white tape - mix 1 part Zinsser bullseye white with 4 parts Zinsser bullseye clear. Easy to clean and keep white.


Matt's Holland

for the colour change with clear or amber shellac using Newbaums colours go to https://www.rivbike.com/products/newbaums-bar-tape and scroll down to the colour samples

Thanks -
It is my 2023 Cino Heroica bike - touring geometry, 46/30 crank that served me in 2016 on a different bike.

Amtrak goes to Whitefish, MT. Only a few miles from Kalispell. We should go together.


Before. The Newbaum's is a touch lemony and it goes a touch cornflowery with the clear shellac
After.

Just enough of slightly deeper yellow with clear shellac, and hopefully = better longevity as yellow.


Drive side pic, before shellac. Trying to be period correct on '59 Rickert (wrong decal style for age), Campa Gran Sport, etc. The crank for graveling, this pump for modern practicality.

EIGHT COATS! I thought I over did it with 3.

Well, it was thinned down and seemed to just keep soaking in....

About to put some purple cotton bar tape on my Moto Le Champ. Want to mellow out the color with shellac. Came here to ask the spray shellac question and of course, there's already a thread about it. Thanks, Wildwood. Had planned to use Drillium's technique, above. I expect a fair amount of masking will be necessary, even with a brush. Shellac can be messy. Anybody else have spray shellac experience on bar tape? I've used shellac with a brush for non-bike applications, so no apprehension there. Just wondering if the spray could be simpler after taking all the necessary masking steps.

In my (limited) experience, the shellac soaks into the cloth tape and evens itself out better than I expected from a brush, so I don't think there would be any coverage advantage from using the spray.

I suspect you're right. The spray seems like it could be simpler, but may not be, ultimately.

gugie You mentioned above that you mixed Zinsser white with Zinsser bullseye clear - what product where you using for the white? I don't see any actual white shellacs, but there are several different "shellac based primer" products.

I just tried whitening some neutral cloth tape with diluted white paint before applying clear shellac, and that didn't come out very white.

You are correct, it's a shellac based primer.


Do mix it with some clear shellac, it's much too thick out of the can to apply directly to tape. [MENTION=114373]northbend[/MENTION] gave me this trick. Once you get a coat or two of white on, you can add several coats of clear shellac to get the feel you want (rough or smooth), and the white will still be very white.

Shellac on cloth tape pros and cons:

Con: you'll need a razor knife to cut it off
Pro: it takes a razor knife to remove

Thanks Gugie.

The white is for a future project. Today's project is this bike:

That tape was my first experiment with shellac. Lessons learned from the first experiment:

1. Shellac on bar tape is fairly easy and cheap, especially if you buy a giant roll of upholstery tape.
2. The cloth tape doesn't really stretch, so you can't use it as a substitute for new hoods like you kinda can with foam tape.
3. Brooks honey saddles would match nicely with amber shellac. Too bad I don't have any honey saddles.

This bar set has three different experiments on it:


On the bottom is a two layer cloth wrap with white paint. It doesn't look too bad in this picture but I would say the paint is a failure. Not only was it not very white, it ended up looking spotty in places due to flaking.

In the middle is tape that was dipped in a VERY diluted brown paint, then squeegeed and allowed to dry before wrapping, then amber shellac on top. I think this is a success - it doesn't exactly match Brooks brown but it is much closer.

On the right is a one layer cloth wrap over a piece of inner tube slid onto the bar for padding. So far it seems like the shellac will be pliant enough to work OK over the rubber, although it hasn't completely hardened up yet. The downside is that the black inner tube really shows through the whitish tape, so if you wanted white you would either have to do a super job on the wrapping to make it look even, or perhaps double wrap it. I'm planning to do the inner tube layer with the brown wrap, so it probably won't show through too badly.

Has anybody tried a padding layer of any kind under cloth with shellac? I'm planning to ride this bike a fair amount, so just plain cloth tape is not ideal.

I've run cheap (like the cheapest I could find) cork tape under some Newbaum's cloth tape. It gets pretty thick (even if you stretch it tight), but it works ok (on a bike my wife doesn't ride all that often because she's not much of a rider). Fair amount of give to it but still seems durable.

I've put a slice of inner tube under cloth tape. It helps a little.

Early results on the Peugeot, I think it looks pretty decent:


The upper part of the bar from the brake levers to the middle has a piece of inner tube slid over it. Here's what it looks like up close in bright light:



The tube was a snug fit and it took some work to get it on there, but because it's snug you can wrap over it without adding much bulk. I think it's hard to tell the difference visually between the top part with the tube underneath and the bottom part without. The tape goes on nice and tight over the tube, so you still get the precise look of cloth tape (not that my wrapping is all that precise, but the tube didn't make it any worse).

It feels like the inner tube will make a difference compared to bare metal on longer rides.

A clear lacquer spray is a better choice and I have long used clear fingernail polish to touch-up dings on bikes and cars to prevent rust or flaking.