Rediscovering Inner Tyre Tubes

Delhi is a fascinating place to look for anything that you think of. I had been thinking of using bike inner tubes for some of my designs as I have seen some folks in the west successfully incorporate them in there creations. I did get a few tubes from my neighbourhood cycle repair shop and tried to cut them into flat sheets, as soon as I cut them I realized that I need something much broader and bigger as joining so many pieces will require a lot of time and the round curvature of the tube does not make it very easy to make a fairly flat piece of rubber.

Space is at a premium here, so rooftops are the storage area

I started hunting for bigger tubes so that I could get fairly straight square pieces; and after running about for a bit I was able to find a few folks who just deal in old tyres and inner tubes that they source from city and state transport fleets.

Stacks of used truck tyres

Here are some more pictures from my inner tube discovery odyssey.

This experienced fellow listened to my needs and showed me the right sizes

Checking for thickness (some were amazingly thick)

The ones I selected on the top of the stash