Originally Posted by EmmCeeBee

Yep, I made a couple for last summer's tour.

This may be more details than you're looking for, but here goes...

I bought a 26mm aluminum seatpost from the junk bin at an LBS (a straight handlebar would've done, too), and cut it to length (about 8"). This was to be mounted about 1.5" inches in front of the handlebars.

Then I took a piece of aluminum stock, about 1"Wx2"Lx3/8"thick. Used a 1" hole saw to cut both ends so that each end had a "C" shape (to fit the handlebars/seatpost piece). Along with the aluminum piece, I cut a similar piece of oak (dense, hard) in the same shape, although the oak was about 2" thick. The aluminum piece is the strength, the oak keeps it rigid.

So for one handlebar extension, I made two of the above aluminum/oak mounts.

Took the 8" piece of seatpost and two aluminum/oak mounts and fixed it tight to my handlebars with hose clamps (the screw-tightening type). It's easy to adjust high/low by loosening the hose clamps, then re-tightening.

Very solid. I made two of these, one for me, one for my wife. We crossed the continent with them, never had any issues. Now the oak is kind of weathered, looks cool.

If I were going to do it again, I'd look at getting different material for the mounts. My local hardware store has hard rubber pieces about 2" thick. I'd try these instead of the aluminum/oak mounts. All these materials (aluminum, oak, hard rubber) are easy to cut with a hole saw in a drill press.

I didn't want to go through this much work, but I never found anything ready-made that came close to what I wanted. I wanted to mount both our handlebar bags an extra 1.5" away from the handlebars, and Swing Grips are just too flimsy. As I said, the homemade extensions were perfect for this, they're strong and never slipped.

Putting a handlebar bag mount on the handlebars means it's even harder to find room for a computer. This extension solved that problem, I mounted our computers on the extension.

I'll try to take a photo, if it'll help. I have the tools (and the time), so it was worth the effort. If all you want is to mount lights, computers, lightweight stuff -- I'd say it might not be worth the effort, and a Swing Grip would be the choice.

-- Mark