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Need help with tires for wooden rims...

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Cyclocross sew ups are wider, but have a non-period aggressive tread and are expensive. An old Wheelmen pamphlet suggested using TWO narrow road bike sew ups per wheel just to get the bike on the road. Tufo is a relatively inexpensive brand.
 
My point in talking about my professional experience with tubulars was to drive home that ALL tubular tires are expensive, due to low production volume and the fact that they are almost all handmade.

Due to UCI regulation, most all cyclocross tubulars will top out at 33mm wide, and yes, most will have some sort of side lug for riding in mud. The Challenge tires I listed are a smooth "file" tread, tan sidewall, and roughly 40mm wide, or about 1.5". Modern 'road' tubular tires come in at 20-28mm wide, and most will have a smooth file type tread.

I personally would not ever suggest that you mount a tire that was narrower than, or even the same width as the rim, because the tire is there to protect the rim, in addition to making the bike bearable to ride. They called bikes "boneshakers" for a reason before the invention of the pneumatic tire. Mounting 2 tires side by side would mean drilling an extra hole in your rim for the extra valve, even basic cornering would be quite strange, and the physical act of mounting 2 tires that are covered in glue would be no picnic.

To the OP, do you plan on mounting the tires up yourself, and how much do you want to invest in a spin around the block on that bike?
 
We see that the Kelly handle bars and wood wheels have been sold a while back. Probably just as well because they likely were much earlier than the bike.

The frame and forks looked like for 26” wheels, and the serial numbers may also reflect 1935–M (Shelby built).

An available NOS McCauley #1000 tall tank might fit better than the Elgin tank; (which we imagine might also have been sold as well?).
 
Modern bike shops in the USA call those tires "Tubulars", otherwise they go by "Tubs", "Singles", "Sew-ups" or "F$^* these!" if you're installing them yourself and you think it will be easy or fast. Tubulars do ride amazing.

Tubular tires are definitely still in production, and unless you plan on doing actual hard cornering on that bike, you won't need to do the level of work that a UCI Cyclocross mechanic does to glue the tires on and ride the bike. The last shop I worked in Portland OR would install tubulars as a service, labor was $125 per tire + $100 per wheel if they had to scrape old glue, plus around $10 per wheel in glue, on top of a fairly expensive tire ($100-150 each) on wheelset(s) that rarely cost less than $1-3k per set. Most people that paid that were well off racers who were either good enough to think it would give them an advantage, or rich enough to not care about the cost.

If you just want to ride the bike and feel that it mostly needs new tires and some love for the chain, I'd just see if you can get that old chain going, and then try the laborious, dirty, glue fumes heavy process of stretching and gluing some modern tubulars yourself!

If the outer diameter of your wheel is roughly similar to a modern 700c Tubular (I would guess that it probably is) and you have a local bike shop you like, Challenge makes a tire called the "Strada Biancha Pro 700 x 40" that your shop could order from QBP, and would probably clear your frame based on your pictures (do some measurements though before taking my word for it).

That bike looks cool, especially the handlebars, and what looks like Industry9 style straight pull spokes (though I couldn't really tell that one from the pictures).

Cool find!

My point in talking about my professional experience with tubulars was to drive home that ALL tubular tires are expensive, due to low production volume and the fact that they are almost all handmade.

Due to UCI regulation, most all cyclocross tubulars will top out at 33mm wide, and yes, most will have some sort of side lug for riding in mud. The Challenge tires I listed are a smooth "file" tread, tan sidewall, and roughly 40mm wide, or about 1.5". Modern 'road' tubular tires come in at 20-28mm wide, and most will have a smooth file type tread.

I personally would not ever suggest that you mount a tire that was narrower than, or even the same width as the rim, because the tire is there to protect the rim, in addition to making the bike bearable to ride. They called bikes "boneshakers" for a reason before the invention of the pneumatic tire. Mounting 2 tires side by side would mean drilling an extra hole in your rim for the extra valve, even basic cornering would be quite strange, and the physical act of mounting 2 tires that are covered in glue would be no picnic.

To the OP, do you plan on mounting the tires up yourself, and how much do you want to invest in a spin around the block on that bike?
I realise that this thread is a few months old, but tubulars are available in Europe at prices way below what is being mentioned here.
Glueing them on isn't really difficult, and unless you're considering going high-level professional road racing, or Velodrome racing on that bike you can use any of the tubular tape (tub tape) products that are available from many manufacturers.
I use these double-sided tapes on all of my bikes that have tubular rims, from 124 year old wood rims to my Mavic Challenger lenticular disc wheels from the 1980's.
It works very well with all sorts of tyres , from narrow track racing tubs to wide cyclo-cross tubs.
No mess, no fuss.
 
Challenge is making tubulars in 700c x 40 and 45. I got the semi knobby in 40 mm here on eBay from the USA for $168.18 for two including shipping. They fit perfectly on single tube wood rims without any gaps. I had to use fiberglass reinforced tape in various spots so it wouldn’t slide off as I was putting them on. It takes a lot, and I mean a lot of grunt to get these on the single tube rims. The valve stem kept sliding crooked, as the wood rim is drilled for Schrader, until I X taped it in place. Challenge makes a semi slick in 700c x 40 but I would have had to get them from the UK at twice the price with shipping. I went as inexpensively as possible because I didn’t know how well they would fit. They fit perfectly. I wish they were all black.
Fiberglass tape holding it so it won’t slide off.

A333DF46-1FD9-47EF-919B-6C55FC385422.jpeg

Aired up, no side gaps, unlike 33 mm tubular cyclocross tires.

808E29D0-3786-46CE-9263-12BC291A520A.jpeg
 
I just put a Challenge 700c x 40 mm tubular on a single tube rim that is a little narrower than the previous one. There is a small amount of the white gluing surface showing on part of one side. It could probably be adjusted so the white doesn’t show.

126311A7-784A-44FD-BB02-FFEB2CF741B5.jpeg
 
I had some rubber ones but they’re missing. I might have thrown them away. I’ve seen them made from the small curved aluminum fittings that mount caliper brakes to forks. I was going to eventually make some this way but I have enough projects. I’ll buy some from your Amazon site. Thanks.
 
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