How not to glue a tubular

Last season I decided to drown myself in the tubular cross tire Kool-aid. I spent somewhere around $1k on a gaggle of Dugast Rhinos. Knowing nothing about how to glue sewups I perused the internets on the subject and had a friend walk me through it to boot. A year later, after racing them in the wettest New England cross season I can remember I have some interesting findings.

First off, Dugast have that cotton casing which is what privides that baby's butt smooth ride that's so sought after. Problem being that cotton doesn't do too well with moisture. So you're supposed to seal it with the aqua seal. But I haven't found a decent tutorial on how to do that or which aqua seal product to use. All I know is that how I did it was wrong. This is what a cotton casing looks like after a season of wet.

That doesn't look pro at all. But who cares because it's a cross tire and it should be covered in mud the whole time anyway. Well rotten casings apparently aren't all that strong either. This is what happens when your tires rot.

That doesn't look good. I have six carbon wheels and six expensive pieces of mildew on them. So they all have to be ripped off and thrown away. This brings up another interesting thing, deep v beds on tubular rims are not so good for 34mm cross tires. I layered on lots of glue to build up the center of the rims for the tires. But apparently that wasn't even close to enough.

See that shiny part? That's where the tire didn't contact the rim. Apparently I rode an entire season with the tires only glued on to the edges of the rims and nothing in the middle. I've heard a rumor that I'd get a spanking from an official if I rolled a tire during a race and the official saw that my tire was glued on so poorly. But it appears that the tape glue combination is far stronger than I ever could have guessed. You may notice that there is no tire in the above picture. It's because even that small contact patch on the edges with tape and glue was enough to rip the cloth backing when removing the tire. I did this six times and tried to be more careful each time. Not one tire made it though in one piece. The glue job was still stronger than the adhesion of the tire to the cloth backing.

In conclusion, don't take lessons from me in how to glue a tire on.