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One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands

Patch Set of bands
Once a bike tube needs its (n+1)th repair, where n is the number of times you're willing to fix it, you can slice up what remains, and end up with a semi-infinite stash of cool looking rubber bands.

Useful? Yup. Cheap? You bet. Quick? Yes, to the point of being trivial.

On the other hand, not only is this a fun way to recycle, but using these is the office supplies equivalent of the secret biker's handshake-- only other bikers will even notice what you're using.



Time to retire The enemy
If you ride a bike, you probably know this drill. Out comes the tube, and out of the tire come the shards of glass, screws and nails, or in this case, the goat head thorns. I had three of them this time.

(I'm not generally in favor of extinction, but do we really need this particular species?)


rubber band
Cut the tube into a set of rings with a pair of big sharp scissors. You can use the whole tube except the valve stem and any areas with big gashes through them. One tube makes an awful lot of rubber bands.

Try to find the interesting parts-- check out how cool the cross section through the patch above looks!


Fingers


If you cut apart the area around a patch (or other interesting feature) as a unit, you can reassemble the set of bands into a coherent structure, here just on my fingertips. You may end up with talc on your fingers this way, since the tubes are often dusted inside. If your tubes are dusty, it's probably best to give them a quick wipe with soap and/or water.


Set of bands


If you really want to show off, keep the bands in their original order when you use them. This set of bands is being used to hold a stack of acrylic parts together.


NewTube As a final note, we find it amusing that some people are already using bike-tube rubber bands and have been for ages. Whenever you get a new tube, it's held together by little black rubber bands. I've always thought that this was a clever way to recycle at the factory. But, you can do it at home too!




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One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands | 16 comments | Create New Account
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One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands
From: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 01 2007 @ 08:58 AM PST
Goat head thorns? Ha! You haven't seen anything yet until you've seen a Honey Locust tree with it's thorns:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_locust

Those things are long and hard enough that they'll go right through a leather boot (I know!), and they can even puncture a multi-ply tractor tire!

But, neat idea on the bands. That should also work with motorcycle tubes, too. And, of course, it'd work for tractor tubes (although you'd end up with some pretty huge rubber bands!).

Dave
One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands
From: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 01 2007 @ 09:04 AM PST
There was a time, just after the dinosaurs died out, that car and truck tires had inner tubes. Those would be cut into giant rubber bands. Our rubber band guns started with a length of 2x4. The rubber band rifle used two pieces of truck inner tube knotted together. That would leave a welt.

Those were the days when surviving childhood actually meant something.

Fred
One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands
From: Anonymous on Wednesday, August 01 2007 @ 02:59 PM PST
I can't believe I never noticed that the rubber band around the tube was actually made from one - I had one right here on my desk, and sure enough, it's a piece of tube...

I feel your pain - our ride got killed by a flat just the other day (thus the band on my desk.) I'm so lazy these days, though, that I'm at n = 0. I had a ten pack of tubes sitting around and I just grabbed a new one.
One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands
From: Dennis on Wednesday, August 01 2007 @ 06:49 PM PST
If you need to induce some welts, you could always cut the bike tube the other way.
One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands
From: CheekyMonkey on Wednesday, August 01 2007 @ 10:11 PM PST
I use old bike tubes in a simiilar way: Cut the tube on either side of the valve so you have a long rubber hose. Cut centimeter-wide strips, the length of the tube. Use the strips as stretchy clamps while glueing odd-shaped items together, wherever a regular clamp cannot be used, due the lack of parallel sides.
Lobster bands
From: Anonymous on Thursday, August 02 2007 @ 11:07 AM PST
I used to fish for lobster off the south of Ireland. We used to use these to close the claws on the suckers. Nothing better or cheaper but I got carpel tunnel from cutting thousands of them. You would put the Lobster on your lap, facing AWAY from you, then put your right hand fore arm on the right hand claw, then get the lobster to clamp shut the left hand pincer, then put the tube on with a double or treble hitch. Then repeat with the right

Diarmuid
One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands
From: Anonymous on Thursday, August 02 2007 @ 11:45 AM PST
If you cut the tube at an angle you can get longer bands, although too much angle and you get a couple of weak spots at the tips.
Topological Explorations
From: Anonymous on Monday, August 20 2007 @ 12:47 PM PST
How did you resist the temptation to cut it spirally?