Well it's been a while since I had any of my own little projects going - so the time felt just right for a weekend in the machine shop.  Before launching into designing and machining a custom stem for my bike I looked around for something I could buy.  Basically I needed a bit of rise (say ~1.5") with 50mm reach.  The closest thing I found was a Hope stem.  A riser handlebar might have worked - but turns out they are rare (no local store carried any) and my attempt to order one online was a fiasco...  All of that plus the fact that I didn't feel like shelling out 100 clams for a stem convinced me that I could machine my own kick ass version.  I did end up re-using the cap from another stem I had, so I'll have to fix that someday.  But anyway, here's the end result!