SurferRosa

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Don't you unwind the roll and remove the cardboard circular core before you start taping the bars? Then simply remove some length of the paper backing before you wrap that section, and just repeat this until done?

jdawginsc 

Suggestions to me have included rubbing alcohol, acetone, Goo-gone and WD-40...maybe time for witch-hazel...

Erzulis Boat 

Thanks all so far! I'll wrap the bars on Saturday.

Schreck83 

No! I like the cardboard core; I usually stick a finger in there, becoming a human tape dispenser of sorts. I guess I like the way Tressostar doesn't unroll by itself. Also, I'm not crazy about dragging nice, new tape over my shop floor.

zandoval 

HA! Flash Back...

SurferRosa

There's a broom, mop, vacuum, or throw rug for that.

Medium Size Dog

Since discovering the beige Nexcare first aid tape I have found a ridiculous number of uses for it. It's seriously sticky, stays put, lasts a long time and doesn't leave a nasty residue. I wrap it on the bars without stretching it to get the cushiony feel I want and then put the Newbaums on top. Have tried the knock-offs and store brands and they aren't quite as good. I usually wear gloves to ride but really like the feel of the cush and cloth on my bare hands.

obrentharris 

I find that the gummy residue makes tight stems even more difficult to remove.
Brent

steine13

I'm glad I subscribed to this thread. The inner tube hack is worth the price of admission.

Here are my several cents:
- You wrap from the center to the end of the bar for the same reason you roof a house from the bottom: you want the overlap to point down. Wrapping the other way looks just as good and lets you tuck the end of the tape inside the bar, but you will roll up the edges of the tape as your hands push forward.

- Twining the tape is the only hipster technique that's actually better and cleaner than the standard way -- in this case, electrical tape.
The piece of inner tube is good, too, but I haven't tried it yet.

- Regarding unspooling the roll of tape or not -- I like to use a loop of electrical wire to keep it from unspooling itself rapidly. It's not foolproof but it helps, and the full length of tape is a bit unwieldy.

- I've been using just one layer of Newbaum's and Rivendell's GOAT gloves for comfort. No problems even on long rides, but my bars are at saddle height, so I don't have that much weight on my hands. In the past, I'd do the top of the bar -- but not the drops -- in some cushioned tape, and Newbaum over it.

- You can buy 3/4" cotton twill tape, which is sewing supply, and use glue stick applied to the bars as adhesive. Fifty yards for ten or twelve bucks is a great deal for test fits. Once I've got it figured out, I wrap it properly.

cheers -mathias

oneclick 

Haven't done that, I think it might squirm a bit especially if there was no glue involved (the rainbow above has no glue).

I do like very much the feel of the Hutchinson bar sleeves that are a sort of poly-rubber about the same thickness and hardness as innertube; not as stretchy so they don't squirm at all.

bikemig 

I like this: https://www.amazon.com/Fizik-Bar-Fou...s%2C112&sr=8-1

Works nicely with cork tape. I may try it with cloth tape but that obviously does not stretch so might be an issue with the added thickness of the gel.

uncle uncle

Here's my ghetto chic effort on my ride about Schwinn. The "tape" is just strips of medium weight cotton material, cut into roughly 3/4" wide strips. Underneath it is another layer of white, half cotton/half polyester tee shirt strips. The nice things about this method is that it afforded me the option to heavily wrap the brake levers, as I had plenty of material to work from. I actually wrapped the lever portions first, then the bars. I estimate I have enough material to wrap this and 28 other sets of handlebars, all from my initial 1.97$, second-hand-shop, investment. I know not everyone has the same aesthetic, desire to experiment, or contrarian approaches as I do, but I thought I'd just share.

Velo Mule

Back before the advent of cushy bar tapes the bars were always taped from the top to bottom and would be finished with a plug or occasionally a bar end shifter. While it is true that the edges of the tape could and would roll, tape was inexpensive enough that this would be the indicator that it is time to buy new tape. It didn't seem so expensive back then, and most cycling enthusiasts did it themselves. Perhaps Tressostar and Velox were better able to bend or stretch to the contour of the handlebars than Neuman's. Since the brake levers don't have rubber/latex hoods, it was usual to put a wrap of tape around the brake lever body as shown in @gugie 's post #10. This would make it slightly more comfortable when on the "hoods".

I am not against taping bottom to top, but I usually do that for the more modern tapes.

If I had that Bottecchia that @Erzulis Boat has, I would tape top to bottom with Newbaum's cloth tape and tuck the ends in with rubber (Velox) plugs if I had them. This is just my opinion. By the way, I like that the bike retains the three pin steel crank arms. The paint looks awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing the handlebars wrapped. Whichever way you do it.

By the way, it's tape, it is meant to be replaced. Then you can try a different color or technique.

bikemig 

I'm saying you're wrong but that is a strong statement that BITD bars were always taped from top to bottom when using cloth tape. That's not how I was taught to do it at the bike shop I worked in back when cloth tape was still the norm.

For what it's worth, I do find Newbaum's a bit harder to work with than Velox Tressostar.

Velo Mule

@bikemig , you could be right. My experience was when I worked in a bike shop from around 1980 to about 1983 (I think). Perhaps sometime after that time period the trend may have started on wrapping from the top with cloth, rather than me pegging it to the introduction of cushy tapes. We did a lot of Grab-On conversions on new bikes back then.

I, and others back then would buy new tape and wrap it whenever the cloth started getting frayed or rolled. Patina or visible wear wasn't a thing then.

gugie 

BITD it was typical to replace your tape annually. That is, unless you were a francophile and went with the shellac method. I've scuffed my tape, another coat of shellac at the beginning of the season and it's good as new.

The drawbacks are that it takes considerable more time to wrap and shellac your bars, and it's hard to remove.

One of the positives is that it's hard to remove. Somebody on the forum once wrote that a big drawback of powder coating is that it's hard to remove. In both cases it's pretty easy to claim that this is a feature, not a bug!

Some of the bikes with shellaced tape that have been through the Atelier:


Rene Herse


Blondin


Alex Singer


1948 Peugeot PH-60

Replacing your tape annually was a tradition after shellacing was forgotten, but it's been around longer than any of the plastic tapes. If you want to tape your bars once and never have to do it again, I'd consider cloth + shellac. Building up the bars to increase the diameter works well for me as I have large paws. I've been using old inner tubes, split along the length to do just this for 4+ decades (they're cheap!)

bikemig 

It has been a long time but I've used an inner tube as well to build up the diameter. So no problem with the cloth tape being long enough to deal with the increased diameter? I'm getting ready to tape some bars with Newbaums and I seem to remember that they are not generous with the length.

gugie 

Reminds me of working at an LBS BITD, some tapes were just shorter. Of course you need to get to "just about finished" before you find out, then it's unwrap and try again.

Bars with sleeves have a natural point to tape up to. Bars that just have a bulge in the middle can be finished about anywhere. I don't ever hold my bars near the stem, so I stop short of where most others do.


Oh, and the shellac thing again

Newbaum's will set you back $12 for 2 rolls. They're 10 feet long x 3/4", which is $1.20/ft
I buy 3/4" twill tape from a fabric supply store. You can find it in 50 yard rolls for under $10 online in various colors. That's just under 7 cents/ft. It doesn't have an adhesive back, but I can start it off with a piece of tape and wrap tight, then shellac. If you absolutely want some adhesive, you can paint on some rubber cement directly to the bars. You can also find it in smaller rolls. It's easy to vary the finished color with the starting tape color and/or shellac (blond vs amber). I've even done white bars using @northbend's method of using one part Zinsser White Flat Shellac-Based Primer, cut with 4 parts Zinsser bullseye clear. A few coats of that, then finish with a coat or two of the clear.

To answer your question, yes, Newbaum's will run out before you get to where the handlebar sleeve step starts unless you're very judicious with overlap. But then a tiny overlap often becomes a gap down the road. Unless you shellac and lock it in place, that is!

Brad L 

I used Newbaum's on my 1972 Legnano. Wrapping bottom to top was necessary since the tape is what holds the Gaslo end caps in place. Prior to wrapping, I installed the brake levers to get them where I wanted them, then taped the clamps in place. I used red electrical tape to finish.

steine13

I like wider bars, like 44 and 46 cm Nitto Noodles... those have a lot of real estate, and I like to keep quit a bit of it unwrapped for things like clamp-on lights and cyclocross levers.. not to mention ye olde Cannondale handlebar-bag bracket. If it's clean and shiny, I see no problem showing a bunch of aluminum. Anybody asks, I tell them it's to save weight.

cheers -m

easyupbug 

I use cotton heavy string not tape and after shellac I have never had a problem. As shown here when another coat is needed from wear and dirty hands/gloves a cleaning and re-shellac makes everything right again.

repechage

I wrap ends to brake levers. yes, the tape can creep above the levers, I just pull it very taught.
Cinelli classic end caps also push this wrap style.
I mark the bar at the lever body end before removal to have an easy guide of where to wrap beyond.

polymorphself 

Skip to where he actually starts wrapping the new tape, this is the exact method I use: