I'll jump in here and say that I totally agree. I like the feel of cotton wrap that has been coated with shellac. I also like that maintenance is pretty easy: every six months to a year add another coat or two and it will literally last forever, and look great the entire time. Pictured below are some rando bars I road the heck out of. To illustrate my point, in the time between wrapping the rando bars and the time when the photo was made I had completely worn through the red color on handlebars wrapped with contemporary tape.

LOL did you find that on regretsy.com? =) Where da heck do you get silk tape? Sounds nice. And azorch, that is a nice light! I wish I can find something like that, but battery powered.

I made up the bit about silk tape.

I bet hemp tape would be nice actually.

Like I said early, I mad emy own wrapping with some canvas from the fabric store, but I might see if anything else looks interesting and experiment with that...I'll post some pictures when I am done (this week maybe? fabrics store was closed today.)

How about cleaning any of these finishes off the handlebars later? Either if you decide you don't like coated bar tape or you just want to clean the bar prior to the next tape, what will clean dried shellac, or polyurethane, or whatever? I would think acetone, but has anyone successfully done this with alloy bars, and not had a bunch of scratches? I'm just looking at coating twine.

The trick is to do it so that you get very little on the bars. With cotton tape, and two or three light coats, done carefully, you hardly get any on the bars, in my experience. Tape peels off leaving a fairly clean surface. Just wipe it down to get the light residue off. I do the final clean up with lacquer thinner, as I remember. Denatured alcohol won't cut dried shellac, at least, very quickly. It will dissolve it, eventually, but I use something that's quicker. No, I don't like working with VOC's either, but I'm a realist. If a person has a thing against the shellac trade and its processes, or the volatile organic chemical thing, the answer is fairly simple. Don't coat your cotton tape with anything. I like it both ways. Coated and un-coated.

Yeah but where's the bug massacre in that?

Oh, the humanity! Save the bugs!

Let's all go out and throw mosquito blood on people wearing silk shirts too!

There's a process where wild silk can be harvested without killing (Tussah) the worm, fyi, hehe. =P Can't wait to see the pictures!

What about the worm in tequila? I want my cruelty-free tequila NOW!

In my mind the worm died happy in that case!

Sorry, but those worms die happy.

Thanks rootboy for the flakes! Here it is, before and after, and I like it! I'll prob put on another coat later but I'm liking the colors I'm seeing at the moment. (Wasn't systematic...so this is 1-2 coats)

Looking pretty good so far. That orange shellac I sent you is probably not the best choice for many tape colors but I think it's working just fine on grey. I would recommend another light coat. Maybe two. By the way, if that first pic is WITH alcohol added, add a touch more

Ha! As I suspected, ok 1 more coat =)

Violin varnish can be shellac I use it for instrument making; Lute and Cittern. A good quality woodworking shop will have it. If you just have the flakes, luthiers swear by Everclear to thin/mix it.