New Blue Lug Cotton Bar Tapes

Clint from Blue Lug Yoyogi-Park posted a blog about our new cotton bar tape.
It was an interesting blog and we felt like we should introduce these new bar tapes to ya’ll, so we translated his blog. Here it goes.

Hello. Clint from Blue Lug Yoyogi-park here.

The world is getting convenient day by day, but it’s always great to stop and look back at the old days. I was born in the generation where most things were already “convenient”. Looking back at some old traditions could give me a new perspective sometimes.

I’m still young and I certainly don’t want to become those guys that would always talk about how “things were better back in the day”.

That being said, I’m writing about something we made at Blue Lug, by “looking back”.

*BLUE LUG* cotton cloth bar tape

We “downgraded” the Acrylic Cloth Bar Tape back to 100% cotton made bar tapes. They are available in 10 colors. As you can see, there are a lot of bright colors. (yay)

Many of you might not know this, but we used to make our own 100% cotton bar tapes way back before we made the acrylic cloth bar tapes. We made the acrylic version since they were “tougher in the rain” and “doesn’t fade as much”. The acrylic bar tapes were a “step-up” from the cotton tapes.

As the years go by, we started to do a lot of this shellac coating bar tapes.

We started to realize that the cotton absorbs shellac way better than the acrylic tapes.

The biggest difference in 100% cotton bar tapes compared to acrylic bar tapes are :

①They absorb more liquid (shellac)

②The color fades more

That’s about it, but that’s just what we need right now.

When putting shellac on acrylic cloth bar tapes, they become stiff  but the cotton stays soft and comfy.

 

↓ Left : 100% cotton    Right : chemical fiber

You could hardly tell the difference when you line them up, but if you look closely, the cotton bar tapes are slightly thinner than acrylic and they both have herringbone weaving which is very nice.

 

Both of them are 3 meters per roll, if you’re wrapping a swept back bar, one roll is enough, but you’ll need two rolls for a drop bar.

Looks like Matsu’s wrapping them on a new build.

It appears he has chosen the pink tapes for this build.  Now, it’s time to get shellacin’

If you’re planning on applying shellac, I suggest you to pick a brighter color. Pink, green, etc.
There’s 10 different colors so it’s really tough to decide but that’s also part of the fun!

Be sure to cover up the floor if you’re going to do the shellac finish. Trust me.

As far as the utensils, it could honestly be anything. It could be a brush or a sponge. FYI, the Yoyogi-park mechanics use the sponge that’s in between a brand new Thomson seat post.lol

It’s also fun to enjoy watching them fade colors for darker ones.

I chose navy for my Appaloosa. No shellac. I’m just going to put em in the sun and watch them fade as the days go by.

There’s always going to be a beauty in low-tech stuff, as long as we keep evolving.

Let’s all go back to the basic again.

-Clint