Repair of gum rubber colored grips

[us56456712]

Well folks, the weather here has been extremely $#|++¥ lately so I’ve been monkeying around to keep my sanity. I have a set of Schwinn gum grips and one had an end that was hanging by a flap and the other end was gone. I jammed the one with the flap in modeling clay and put the one with the missing end in the clay mold. I pored flexible marine epoxy in both and got a usable save. The white color is from the clay. I thought about corks or a drop bar plug to keep dirt out but this was easier as all the stuff was in the house and I didn’t have to go outside in the howling blizzard to look through my shop junk stash. It could fall off but seems like it will stay put.

 

[AndyA]

Nice! I guess you have lots of time in the winter in the U.P. to come up with clever ideas. What brand "flexible marine epoxy" did you use? How flexible is it when cured? I've thrown away quite a few grips where the ends were banged up. I know that there are colorants/pigments available for use with epoxy so the technique could to be applied to other color grips. Thanks!

 

[us56456712]

Nice! I guess you have lots of time in the winter in the U.P. to come up with clever ideas. What brand "flexible marine epoxy" did you use? How flexible is it when cured? I've thrown away quite a few grips where the ends were banged up. I know that there are colorants/pigments available for use with epoxy so the technique could to be applied to other color grips. Thanks!

It’s not as flexible as gum rubber but it doesn’t crack when you bend it. It’s pretty flexible. I rubbed this stuff into a cracked Brooks saddle after I cleaned it and soaked it for 3 days in pink RV antifreeze that had a a half pint of glycerin dissolved in it. This made it a lot more flexible but the top leather was still chipping off. After the flexible epoxy dried the saddle was saved, no more leather chipping off.
This is the brand I use.

I’m currently making a set of fake wood rims using it as a lamination and top coat.

The paper cover is glued to the roughed up alloy rim with water proof flexible carpenters glue to make a paper mache. The paper is then sanded and covered with rubbed in flex epoxy. Then it’s sanded and outdoor epoxy that has wood flower in it used to thinly cover with three layers of epoxy wood.

Before sanding and staining.

It still needs more coats of stain and a final flex epoxy top layer. Fake 1895 Lobdell logo in pencil with my shaky hand.

I love being retired. I want the rim to look old. I plan to use darker stain around the spoke holes so it looks like rust stain. I have quite a few bikes with real wood wheels. They need a lot of spoke tensioning so I thought this might fix this problem. Here is the Brooks with flex on the leather.