Thorn Drop Bars for Gilles Berthoud Rohloff Shifter - 25.4mm Clamp - Black

We wanted some drop bars which would maximise the functionality of the shifter Gilles Berthoud has made for the Rohloff hub.
It is no use having fantastic bars if your choice of stem is limited. We have an awesome quantity of different lengths and angles of stem available but these are in 25.4mm diameter. We decided to have the bars made with a 25.4mm diameter centre to allow us to draw on our stock of stems.
We wanted to fit the shifter as close as possible to the stem, to maximise the amount of useable straight bar on the “tops” of the drops. We did this by making the parallel section of the centre swell as small as possible (40mm). We also made the taper from 25.4mm to 23.8mm (the standard diameter of drop bars) as short as we could, commensurate with avoiding the production of a stress riser in this critical area.
We could only afford to have one width of bar made so we decided to have a medium drop and a medium forward reach with a relatively wide 44cm centre to centre width. This width gives valuable extra straight section of the bars and is a great choice for touring.
Although we don’t expect to use the “hooks” very often, we knew that we must take advantage of the anatomical shapes which are available.
Finally what would be the point of making a specific bar for use with a Rohloff hub if we didn’t use the finest possible material to make it from?
We were advised that, for such a shape, we should choose double butted Al 6061…so we did!