I "solve" this by taping lots and lots of handlebars. I get the overlap right so that it looks pro to an audience of one. The left overs are all cloth, and once a year or so I can do a piece meal patchwork quilt tape job like the Rivendell folks do sometimes. I always save the scraps.
The analytical way to do it would be to take a fabric tape measure and get an estimate of the length of the handlebar. Just guessing, my 46cm Noodle is probably about 50cm long per side (500mm). That bar has a diameter of 23.8mm, so it's surface area is roughly pi * 23.8mm * 500mm = 37,400 square millimeters. Newbaums comes in a 10 foot roll and is 3/4" wide, so the total surface area is 3040mm x 19mm = 57800 square millimeters. So you have enough to cover the 37,400 of handlebar and have 20,400 square millimeters left over for overlap. So about half of the bar is "single layer" and the other half is "double layer". that means on average you would overlap about one quarter the width, so that for each width of tape, 1/4 is over the last wrap, 1/4 is under the next wrap, and the half in the middle is single layer. Around curves, it's more overlap on the inside and less on the outside so you'd have to judge to get to right about 1/4 on average. At the brakelever, there's bar surface you are NOT covering because it's already covered by the brakelever but some people use up a ton of length with figure 8 stuff around there, so you'd have to include a fudge factor that accounts for that. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito, CA On Tuesday, June 9, 2026 at 1:05:46 PM UTC-7 George Schick wrote: > Let's say that you've purchased a couple of rolls of bar tape for your > bike. You begin wrapping at the plug end of the bar on one side, around > the brake lever handle, and on toward the stem and *whoops* you come up > short. Or, you come up long with lots of extra tape left over by spacing > too far apart. Given the length of bar to be wrapped and the amount of > tape available is there a standard rule-of-thumb for wrapping the bars with > an estimate of even spacing so that one doesn't run short or with too much > extra? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/8c9555d1-c156-4814-b24b-a5257a309c1fn%40googlegroups.com.
