Have you had a look at the leather handlebar grips in our shop yet? Although they might look simple, our custom grips go through a lot of different stages before they are ready to be fitted onto your motorcycle! If you’ve ever wondered exactly how we do this, then you’ve come to the right place! We’ll be revealing our secrets and showing you just how much work goes into engineering each set!
Read about the process of making our custom handlebar grips
Turning the metal base
The first stage of making our leather handlebar grips is expertly turning the high-quality aluminium on our manual lathe. We’ve been engineering our handlebar grips like this for years, so it’s safe to say we know exactly what needs to be done to create a strong product with no flaws. By turning the aluminium on a manual lathe, we can easily make handlebar grips for both 1” and 7/8” handlebars!
Cutting the leather
We only purchase high-quality British leather to ensure that our grips are hardy enough to withstand years of riding. As we use natural untreated leather, no sheet is exactly the same, and therefore every set of grips we create is completely unique. We use a fly press to hand cut the sheets of leather into perfect rings. As we hand stamp each ring, the process can take hours of labour, but once the rings have been cut, we’re ready to begin constructing our handlebar grips.
Hand-constructing the grips
Each set of grips is made up of around 120 individual rings, which are glued by hand to the metal shafts. We use a water-activated glue to firmly hold the rings to the shaft and each other. When all the rings have been attached, they are pressed down and secured in place with a metal end piece. As each leather ring is slightly different, each grip will have a different pattern, and we often have great fun seeing what kind of patterns we can create using different coloured leathers.
Trimming, Dying & Dubbing
The final stage of the process involving a bit of machining and a bit of handcrafting know-how! Using a manual mill, we gradually take off the top layer of the leather, to reveal an even smooth texture underneath. Once we have removed the outer layer, we apply a dye and dubbing to each set to protect the leather and allow the leather to age naturally without distortion.
Ready to purchase
After hours and hours of engineering and hand construction, our leather handlebar grips are ready for purchase! We sell our handlebar grips with two variations of finishes, either polished satin aluminium or black cerakoted so you’re able to pick a style that suits your motorcycles aesthetic! We would never sell a product that our head engineer, Paul, would not be happy to have on any of this motorcycles, so you can be certain you’re going to end up with a unique, high quality, hand-crafted product!
