Can you guess what this was in its former life? (Answer supplied in spoiler.....

[mmmmartin]

Here's a clue: there are three elements here: not the nut and bolt, obvs. And @PpPete might guess as he knows what i have on my audax bike. This has just been added to my New! Shiny! Thorn Raven.


and here's the answer:

(click to show/hide)

It's a slice taken from a plastic flower pot, with spinnaker tape used to hold in place the reflective taken from a high-viz jacket. It helps me show up in the dark, obvs, and stops those close behind being sprayed with muck from filthy wet roads.

I'm very pleased with this, as it looks a lot nicer and smarter than the one on my audax bike, which does a great job of making me look like a fully paid up member of the old codgers' club of Audax UK. (which I suppose I am..)

[Cudzoziemiec]

My guess was wrong, perhaps in more ways than one.

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I guessed it was the reflective strip off a road cone.

[Kim]

I got the...

(click to show/hide)

...flowerpot.  But assumed the shiny stuff was foil duct tape (the kind you actually use on ducts).

[mmmmartin]

Very well done, Sir (edit - oops and Madam).
excellent and extremely close - and it could well have been that. However, the bit of reflective from a road cone that I found covered in grease in a ditch several years ago and brought home (on the grounds that it might come in useful one day) went on the same item for my audax bike. This specific bit of reflective came from a high-viz jacket for a fire warden found at work in a disused part of the office when refurbishment was going on and it would have been thrown away. So it didn't belong to anyone really and it wasn't "theft".

As an aside, this type of reflective is best for stuff that is permanently outside and in the rain, and on the bike. For jackets I use the thinner stuff you get on the sort of reflective jacket that costs €2 in a French supermarket. The labels on those jackets say the reflective lasts for only 21 wash cycles, which for my running jackets and my windproof cycling top is an entire lifetime.

And to be even more tedious I sew those strips on using my 100 year old German sewing machine bought in an Oxford junk shop for a tenner.

[Cudzoziemiec]

And to be even more tedious I sew those strips on using my 100 year old German sewing machine bought in an Oxford junk shop for a tenner.

Nothing tedious about that. I'm quite envious of your ability to sew, your old machine and your luck in finding things. 

The labels on those jackets say the reflective lasts for only 21 wash cycles, which for my running jackets and my windproof cycling top is an entire lifetime.

But I can't say I approve of this. I mean, washing a windproof top? 

[Moultonaught]

And to be even more tedious I sew those strips on using my 100 year old German sewing machine bought in an Oxford junk shop for a tenner.

Nothing tedious about that. I'm quite envious of your ability to sew, your old machine and your luck in finding things. 

Seconded!  Cudzoziemic your inner womble is showing...

[Cudzoziemiec]

  

[mmmmartin]

Ok. I'll put up some pix of my latest creation.

[Vince]

Is spinnaker tape a downwind version of helicopter tape?

[Mr Larrington]

Or hockey tape for non-Canadians?