Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Randonneur Handlebar Bag Stiffener à la Dr. Codfish (and others)


I got the idea from The Dr Codfish Chronicles Blog by Paul Johnson, but others have been onto this coroplast idea too. Will de Rosset posted about building the handlebar bag itself from nylon with a coroplast top frame for stability while keeping it extremely light weight, and then my neighbor across the street, Dylan the blogger behind if i had a bike blog..., built up his very own coroplast handlebar bag together with his partner Grace. Beautifully constructed and finished! And of course, old reliable Kent Peterson has already posted on this subject with his artfully crafted coroplast handlebar bag.

No way I was going to go that far, but I did have a hankerin' for stiffening up my Gilles Berthoud bag for the same sag-prevention reasons that Dr Codfish outlines. I love my bag stiffener, and it was a fun little project.

See that little gap between the white coroplast liner and the canvass of the bag in the right side of the photo above (the front of the bag)? I discovered last weekend it is the perfect new pocket into which I can slip my little plastic bag containing my brevet card! With this arrangement, any time I get the obsession to look "one more time" to make certain I still have my brevet card I can scratch that niggling obsessive itch. Very satisfying!

I also really like the way it brightens up the interior of the bag for finding little lost items.

Here you can see that I bolted right through the coroplast with the decalear-mounting bolts.

This is a photo of a Gilles Berthoud decaleur from the Peter White website.







Thanks, Dr Codfish, Dylan & Grace, and Will! Also, all you other unknown-to-me coroplastic pioneers. I may not be an early adopter, but I do know a good idea when I see one. And all these stiffening benefits without the need of any prescription. Positively stimulating!

For other posts about handlebar bags and their racks, please see:


Keep it stiff,

CurioRando