I have a friend who is a savant wrench with seemingly every tool and part in the world, and the idea of 'chopping' the stem came from seeing a few in one of his bins. It goes against my nature to make such a drastic modification to, well, anything. To a fault, really. But I figured if I did that with the Periscopa, I'd want to make sure the bolt still worked, or find a shorter one, first, and figure out how to clearly mark a new minimum insertion point relative to however much material I removed. If I go this route though, and assuming it works, it'll likely stay on the bike and in my possession a long time, as my 'collection' doesn't move much. And it'll never be a problem for me because I am trying to get it lower, not higher.