Originally Posted by jeff williams
The person who has the press is a cyclist and builds steel trusses for stage lighting.
Ahh, but does he engineer them?
Originally Posted by jeff williams
We will discuss the placement and size of the holes.
OK, you're working on chromoly, that's good. Even if it fails, it shouldn't fail catastrophically - - might bend, but shouldn't snap. I'd be careful about the idea of drilling through the sides of the stem: the sidewalls are the strength for vertical torsional loads. Drilling top-to-bottom might be better.
Originally Posted by jeff williams
The heaviest weight\duty is my bars and stem. Nobody breaks the ends of the bars, the stress isn't there, it's @ the stem clamp.
That may be true, but the bars are a continuous length of seamless, drawn tubing - - made to distribute load over their length. Shortening of this length of this load-absorption could stress the rest of the structure of the bar at the bends and such.
Originally Posted by jeff williams
Few holes, maybe up to 1/3 of the metal removed under lock-on grips.
I don't think I'd do any overlap of those holes in the grip area (as your drawing indicates) - - maybe a single spiral so that ther aren't any holes in alignment? Just a thought. Good luck . . . doublecheck your insurance
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