Making a handlebar

Excellent v interested to see how it turns out. I guess strip the chrome, mitre and then tig. Are you going to use those paper templates for mitreing or just go at it manually??

A bit of radio silence, but things are ticking along. Tubes arrived, template was made, tubes marked, tubes cut, tubes mitered. Well, at least a rough mitre for now, I'll have to check the fit tonight. Will take a pic.

Pics are terrible

Those mitres look good. You'll need to get that chrome off though, it won't weld with any impurities.

This is so happening

Yesterday evening I started building it up, got one side done. Chuffed.
Stem is not this one, just using one I had to hand. It'll go from pathetically short to ridiculously long.

nice nice nice!
good project, how much (if it's not being too nosey) did they end up costing and how much time did they take?

I'm eyeing up some Soma Crazy bars, which come in cromo or alu.

Total cost = £23
Weight > 800g!

I kept them very long on the swept back part, feels comfy. Might shorten one day if I'm hitting things. The cool thing is that I got exactly what I was after:

Nice one that's so cool! Well done for giving it a go and getting what you wanted out of it

@ough did you take off the chrome or not bother?

Chrome wasn't removed, but not because I made an informed decision. The guy who welded it took a good look and said it'd be fine.

The welds are not pretty, they're quite beefy. He said he could file them down to make it pretty, but the excess makes it stronger. We left it quite rough, there's tape on top anyway.

stress testing before first ride ?

Sounds sensible, how does one go about that?

Up to now my approach has been to overbuild, just in case. Tubes are thick (1.5mm), weld is generous. It feels super solid, but obvs the trepidation and braking on a bike it's a different kind of stress than me balancing my weight on it on my living room.

Also, I know bars have reinforcement on clamp area. I like to believe the shim acts in a similar fashion, doubling the overall thickness of tubing on that area?

Et voilà

Love the look of this @ough. Did you build it with a particular function in mind?

This setup is for a small trip next week, to Paris. I find that my body complains a bit much if I don't vary the grip, hence the bar. The bike is me on my peak Grant Petersen phase, I'm loving it.

Eventually I'd like to fit dirt drop stem and bars, with bar end shifters. It's likely to require significant investment, so this handlebar is a way of trying something different with the parts I already had. First ride was crazy different, feels positively luxurious to have that amount of hand room. Bike looks like a truck now!

How did the bars hold up on your trip?

on a related note

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndt8Di_TjJE

Yes, I didn't die.

Bars are comfortable, I was on the swept back part most of time but the forward protrusions were super useful. It's great for climbing, and giving the lower back a bit of a stretch on the fast straights. The flat bit was the one I used the least.

What I discovered, though, is that the headset was not too happy in coping with the tremendous leverage generated by a 700mm wide bar + 150mm long stem mounted so tall. Towards the end I could hear a chewing metallic sound, increasing in frequency. I lowered the stem by a few mm, and it disappeared (for now).

Sweet bars fam! You got a nicer drive side pic?

No, not yet

Er... lowering stem stopped the metallic chomping sound?

I would check steerer.

PS. Bars look rad! Also recently joined the hordes looking at cheaper Jones / H / Loop alternatives.