https://www.gov.uk/product-safety-alerts-reports-recalls/product-recall-salsa-cycles-cowbell-carbon-cowchipper-carbon-handlebars-2212-0218

Bars being put to market without robust testing is ridiculous, but not surprising.

I love the idea of wide bars, but it would be helpful to have some guidance to the proportions of the matter. @bikepackingcom:disqus you mention you love riding a 48cm and 52cm… not to get too personal but how wide are your shoulders? Trying to get a baseline for scale.

Late reply to this. Yep, but the Wolf Tooth tape is 40mm wide vs 20-25mm width regular tapes.

I purchased a Fargo in July.
At first it was very hard to get comfortable,until I realized that the Fargo is set up to ride
In the drops.
This is where the woodchippers shine.
If you aren’t comfortable in the drops then look somewhere else.I spend about 85% of my ride in the drops.
I find I’m not as beat up after a 35mile ride with Fargo.
That being said I have cowchippers on my Roubaix and Diverge.

Good point. I’d like to try the 520mm model.

For that reason I have built up a really nice Ti Rando bike to cover light gravel duty.

To that end I swapped out the shallow drop 420 mm road bars for flared 500 mm gravel bars. I like them although I am aware this increases reach slightly.

I had an incident in which my left cleat didn’t cleanly release and I fell over. I was on the
hoods. I think most people who have ridden any amount have experienced this.

On my bike with a 420 mm bar I would have landed on my side. On my mountain bikes with 840 mm swept bars I would have hit the end of the bar before my shoulder and hip.

But on this setup the first contact was the back of my wrist and I sustained a severe scaphoid fracture and now have some new Ti in the form of a headless compression screw as of surgery 3 weeks ago.

I am not casting aspersions at any type of bike or bar setup. But I do want to raise the question: do such wide bars put wrists at risk?

John https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57710be4e5450ab73ddd47e250627c574f5921ceac758f1dcca9643c74c2f969.jpg

Wow, that’s no fun at all. Thanks for sharing.

Should lock up this tread thread

Also surprised to see the Whisky Spano carbon bars missing from this list as Bikepacking did a feature on it.

Also, love your nuanced vids/commentary Miles. Love that you give an opinion on kit/setups rather than just stepping on eggshells like most cycling journos.

Yep but they both cover more bar than the Walmer bar tape mentioned which is at 2150mm. (WT one is shorter but it is 10mm wider than conventional tape). The Pro Gravel tape is also 2300mm.

Thanks! Looks like the Wolf Tooth tape is only 1520mm though, Ergon is 2300mm.

We clearly have a pun problem in cycling. I don’t know where it stems from, but I’m here to clamp down on it.

Interesting, I’ll see if we can get some clarification from Redshift.

I also compared this handlebar with the Specialized Hover (15mm rise) and the Ritchey Ergomax (10mm rise): The 20mm rise of the Kitchen Sink is not correct, but is in the range of the Hover.

After years of trying to figure out how to alleviate my hands from tingling—bike fit etc, I finally ordered a pair of Jones Bars for my Salsa Vaya. I hope they work out.

Added!

Added!

Added!

Wooooo that costs more than my frameset! What are your takes on riding with it?

My 54 Kona Rove has 440mm bars, I’m thinking of jumping up to 500mm Cowchippers but no one has them locally to play with.

Nitto track drops chopped and merged with some old mtb handlebars

No its nitto track drops welded to some old mtb bars..👍

nice wrap up

Yes had a pair in my hands and only because I fill the Woodchipper 46cm is a bit narrow for my Jones LWB Spaceframe, that I’m thinking to run a pair of Spank Flare 25 by 52cm handlebars. Any drop handlebar is better than a Jones Loop handlebar for 100+ days of back to back riding.

Well I have a Jones LWB Spaceframe bike and after a load of discomfort I have changed to a set of Woodchipper drop handlebars and now love riding my Jones. I may change them out to a set of Shank 25 drop handlebars to get a wider flared handlebar of 520mm!

holy, is that a walmer bar?

Thanks Miles, I was able to source some from Crust!

That’s from Camp and Go Slow: https://bikepacking.com/news/rattlesnake-bartape-camp-and-go-slow/

stop this. put a plug in it.

Funny you say that, I came across this article and comments section by searching for “480mm dropping to 460mm drop bar experience”. I ordered my first bike in July and went for a gravel bike as I wanted something for cross-country/bike-packing riding. Mistake #1 is I assumed I could just swap out any bar design I wanted and had been eyeing up those touring specific swept-back flat bars while waiting for my bike. So instead I am stuck with drop bars as I can’t afford/stomach to do a gear lever overhaul after changing nearly everything else on the bike! It came with stock 420mm bars and I actually paid for a bike fitting early on because I was concerned the frame was too large. The bike fitter tweaked a few adjustments and was happy but I feel I am at the edge or the margins of the magic comfort zone (saddle ended up being quite far forward and stem reduced to 80mm so not much more room for manoeuvre there) and more importantly I found the 420mm bars made my steering really jittery and unconfident on the type of riding I was hoping for, canal tow paths, uneven paths and weaving around random posts/gates.

So I was quite relieved to find a plethera of gravel dropbars out there looking to marry the discilplines of road and mountain biking. Another issue i quickly picked up on was very strong numbness/pins and needles induced by hand fatigue from vibrations when riding along tow paths for more than an hour, so I was really interested in the Spank Flare 25 range which uses their vibocore(?) tech. I bought 3 sizes 500mm, 480mm and 460mm and tried the 500mm. Instantly felt a sense of stability but to my eyes it looked quite extreme so tried the 480mm and found it more comfortable but still stable. I particularly liked the angle of the gear levers from the flare and the space for mounting a couple of lights and bell etc. I didnt bother trying the 460mm as its a bit of a faff changing everything.

The next issue I encountered was perineum discomfort which meant trying about 10 seats all with pressure cutouts and learning about saddle shape and and problems with tilt, then I found the hand fatigue thing wasnt complete cured by the new handlebar so tried the redshift shockstop stem. They didnt have the 80mm version back then so went for the 100mm 30 degree angle one as a pseudo 80mm, the combination of the vibrocore bar and this stem solved that issue. Then I got 650B wheels etc and realised I was now probably way out of the parameters of the bike fitting I had paid for. After a couple of months I started to get nagging pains in my right shoulder which got worse to cover my right hand and little finger. After watching countless bike fitting videos it dawned on me that the width of my bar could easily have tipped me outside of the comfort zone, upsetting the balance and adding too much pressure on the hands (plus after messing about with the saddle trying to get the perineum discomfort sorted).

I tried playing with the seat aft and height but again if you go changing too much there you start to introduce other issues in your back and legs etc. Uh. So yeah I guess the main issue with these gravel drop bars is that they dont have that much flexibility basically the brake and gear levers have to go in one place… on the drops, so it stops being a bar with lots of possiblities, it’s not really like having all this width to play with on different types of terrain; you have to be quite careful about upsetting your physiological balance if you have your bike tuned already. Because of the flare the width between the drops is less but you dont really ride at the very ends of the hoods anyway. So I am now looking to try the 460mm version of the Spank Flare 25 as I dont want to start getting hand fatigue from vibrations again, its arriving next week hopefully. Im really hoping the slight reduction in width will bring me back into the zone of stability and balance between saddle and bar. In hindsight I would have saved so much money going for a custom fit bike build in the first place lol.

Good catch! Updated!

Same here. Love this list but disappointed that Bikepacking crew didn’t use as an opportunity to talk about bike fit. When I got fit for the first time a couple years ago, I had pain between my shoulder blades. My fitter recommended sizing down from 46mm wide bars, which I got because that’s all the rage, down to 42mm bars. And just like that, the pain was gone! Now I find myself going from the 16 degree flare of the Easton bars to the 12 degree of the Ritchey — the wider drops just don’t get along with my body. And I have a hunch we aren’t alone! Another part of the discussion is how you should adjust stem length when widening bars, and even bar height. I know this can become a thicket in a hurry, given how everyone’s body is different. Still: I think the fit component of this is missing from an otherwise great conversation.

http://www.dedaelementi.com/gravel100/

80+ cm.. For all that off road control..👍

haha, that’s a big one!

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b95f2c763491c1b86b88da178cb26ce29f3a90c9c8984c273d34182886a41cd9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5cd901827b4384df171e338bb4035fc9f8edb86d715d4c4412f51f5ffb451ce9.jpg

Logan, I’d read that.

I’m with you on this. I have never understood the pull of drop bars either other than aesthetics. It seems like offerings like the Jones Loop would make a lot more sense. The worst header I have ever taken was over drop bars on a gravel bike while monkeying around off road. I’ve never had that problem on flat bars.

Too many puns. You all need to drop this right now. It lacks flare. As a matter of fact, you should just sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Fixed!