How Does the Leather Hold Up? Bicycle Bar Wraps After 7 Years

A Black woman wearing a denim shirt is carrying a bicycle down a set of stairs in an urban environment. The bicycle has a green paint job and honey leather wrapped handlebars.

Original, unique designs to help with lifting and carrying your bicycle

Lifetime leather bar wraps in five styles for every type of handlebar and bicycle

A woman bicycling on a bright summer day over a green lawn wearing suede fringe cowgirl boots and with a 6-pack of Anchor Steam beer connected to the top tube of her bicycle with a honey leather 6-pack frame cinch

Best-selling "commuter essentials" for making the daily commute easier

A dark brown leather round, barrel-shaped saddle bag with cedar wood sides mounted to the back of a brown leather Brooks saddle on a cream-and-brown painted bicycle

Stunning handcrafted bicycle bags carry the essentials and turn heads!

Two people playing a game of travel cribbage on a wooden picnic table with a small leather and birch cribbage board

Our original best-selling Travel Cribbage Boards have fans worldwide

Two sets of travel dice on a dark brown leather table surface. Both sets show six dice coming out of a square brass tube. The dice are 7mm, smaller than standard. One has white dice and the other has black dice.

Convenient dice games on-the-go: farkle and yacht (yatzy)

Two people playing dominoes using small, domino-sized playing cards on a walnut wood table with snacks and drinks. The domino cards are double 12 with different colors for each number and hand-drawn.

Perfect for travel: hand-drawn domino playing cards (2 sizes!)

Close-up of a folding leather travel backgammon board mid-play on a weathered wood surface. A hand is reaching in and moving four game pieces (which are brass nails) between triangles, which are laser-engraved in the honey dyed leather. Accessories are visible, dice and doubling cube and peg storage

Travel Backgammon for travelers, made from natural materials

A variety of handcrafted leather and wood handles on a sample board as seen from above and an angle

All handcrafted handles in 8 styles, 4 leather colors, & 3 metal finishes

Collection details, stylesheets, dimensions, sizing, palette & more

Walnut Studiolo Drawer Pulls Oswego Leather Wrap

Wrap handles, bannisters and more in quality veg-tan leather

Two cabinet doors swinging open towards each other with matching leather Lovejoy loop handles. The leather touches so the cabinets don't crash into each other, a solution for problem corners in kitchen design planning

Flexible but sturdy, creative solutions to tricky problem corners

Leather 101

We wrote a free educational series about our favorite material, from how it's made to spotting vintage quality

Valerie and Geoff from Walnut Studiolo are standing on a pile of driftwood between two boulders on the North Oregon Coast beach near Manzanita, with mountains and grey sky in the background

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A long dark brown leather blueprint tube is shown on a long countertop being hand stitched together by Geoff, whose stitching hands are in the background

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Valerie and Geoff Franklin of Walnut Studiolo standing behind their bicycles on a grassy green lawn. Geoff is doffing his hat to Valerie and she is smiling, as a gesture of service.

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by Valerie Franklin
May 12, 2019
2 min read

For over 10 years, we've worked with the same friend, Michael Ward, as the videographer on all our installation and Kickstarter videos. Most of the bikes we've used in the videos have been his or his family's.

So when we were filming the installation video for our new bar wrap, the Coil Leather Bar Wraps, we realized the exact same bikes from our previous videos were all together in one place, after 6 or 7 years! Reunion!

Michael and his brother are regular bicycle commuters in rainy Portland and admit they didn't regularly maintenance their leather so our Sew-on Bar Wraps and Braided Bar Wraps have been put to the test. We filmed the Braided Bar Wraps installation video and the Sew-on Bar Wraps installation video in 2013.

Let's compare the results - how did the leather perform after years of use?

The results?

Although the leather could've used a little cleaning and conditioning, it still looked gorgeous!

We noted that the Black 2-Plait Braided Bar Wraps had faded a bit. Meanwhile the Dark Brown Sew-on Bar Wraps had darkened a bit - almost to black where the hands rested most often on the top of the bar.

Compared with the shiny new Honey Coil Bar Wraps, these three were meant to strike a pose together.

Enjoy the photo gallery and all 3 installation videos below: