A New Suit of Clothes

Special thanks to my 9th grade geometry (and 11th grade Calculus) teacher, Ray Peters, of Hampton, PA for the title. I can't even remember what he used it for (something about moving numbers or variables to different sides of the equation -'you take the 8, divide both sides, give it a new suit of cothes' or something like that)... but it's stuck with as a turn of phrase since.

At any rate, the recipient of the aforementioned 'new clothes' in this case is not a digit or a variable, but my bicycle handlebars. Having become enamored with the look of nicely taped and shellacked bars, and the look they lend to the bike as a whole, upon receiving my Surly Long Haul Trucker this last year, I applied a roll of Cinelli 'natural' cork tape and several coats of shellac. After many miles in the saddle, I not only found my cork tape to be uncomfortably (for me... I know a lot of folks love it) squishy, but the shellac was cracking, to boot. So what's a fellow to do? You take the bars, move them over here, and give 'em a new suit of clothes.

But what kind? Well... they had to be less squishy and still look good. And I suck at starting and finishing the ends, so the whole electrical tape or twine thing had to go. I ordered some yellow and brown tressostar cloth tape from Velo-Orange, and followed these instructions. While it took several tries, the harlequin weave really looks nice. It's not perfect, but it's not too bad. It's very difficult to keep the cloth tape from buckling or wrinkling while wrapping an irregularly shaped tube at an angle. 2 layers of cloth (from the weave) will hopefully be soft enough but not squishy (I'm a big fan of the Fizik tape, which seems to have just the right balance). And let's face it, it just looks pretty.

Here it is after one coat:
apologies for the Trib in the background.