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Working with Correx

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fd3:
My DIY skills extend to and end at IKEA furniture and painting walls, so I want to keep my ambitions very minimal.  At the same time the summer allows me a little time to work on projects and I am considering working on wheel covers and some sort of rear tailbox for my catrike.
As I am a simple person with the use of tools that encompass "stuff I find lying about" (a go-to tool in our house is a steak knife) so I am thinking of using correx and zip ties.  I'd like to not reinvent the wheel, so would appreciate any experience anyone else has had (even lack of success is a useful learning tool).

Kim:
The best way to stick correx together is with a polypropylene-friendly hot melt glue like Tecbond 261.  It sticks admirably well, but supposedly won't stand up to prolonged exposure to wet.  Fine for a racing season or two.

When anchoring correx with cable-ties, it helps to double layer with the corrugations at right-angles, so it doesn't pull through.

I molished wheel covers for the Baron using 1mm ABS.  Easy to cut a perfect circle by drilling a central hole, and bolting a Mk 1 bit of wood in place with a scalpel blade attached at the right radius.  Probably viable with correx too.  The problem I found was that you have to split the circle to get the dish right, then anchor it in place on the wheel.  I tried to be clever by gaffer-taping it in place then removing it from the wheel and solvent-welding a strip of ABS across the seam, but this just made for a lump of stiffer material that stuck out.  Attaching to the spokes with cable ties seems like a good idea, but unless done very loosely tends to result in warping.  I found that insulating tape to the rim's braking surface gave the best results.  But not as good as some sort of heat-shrink plastic (think model aircraft wings) that other riders have used.

Disc brake calipers and derailleurs need more clearance than you think they will.  I had to swap the BB7 on the front back to a nasty Shimano caliper to gain a bit more clearance for the disc, and bottom gear at the back (which you don't need for racing) makes godawful rubbing noises.

fd3:
I understood ... some of that.
Naïve consideration, the idea of wheel covers is just to flatten the surface of the wheel, no?  So covering it and no gaps is the main point, yes?   I have a simpler job on the back wheel as I have no brake.

Kim:
Yep.  The problem is that the surface of a wheel is effectively a very shallow cone, and molishing smooth cones with very specific angles using a semi-rigid material isn't as easy as it might appear.

At least on the outer surface of a trike wheel you don't need to accommodate the hub[1], which probably simplifies things.


[1] Having cut my perfect circle using the bit-of-wood compass technique, I enlarged the central hole with a holesaw.

LittleWheelsandBig:
The surface of a rear wheel is two different shallow cones and clearances are very, very tight on the chain side.

There are how-to guides for various types of cover materials. Have a look through those to find some traps for the unwary player.

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