RickH wrote:..............I was considering writing similar as I have about 9cm (3.75") gap between my finger tips & the bars too..................
....yes, but as I say, saddle lengths vary.......I have just measured the saddles on the three bikes that I have on the road at the moment, one is 280mm long, one is 292mm and one is 299mm...........my sit-bone positions are equal distances from the rear of the saddle, as far as I can measure the indentations, and sit-bone indents to front of the bends on the bars are, again as far as I can measure, the same.
The bars on one bike measure 120mm from centre-line of the tops to the front of the bends, and the other two measure 150mm.
Using the method of placing elbow on saddle nose and touching the bar's top with the finger ends will give lengths (i.e. sit-bone to front of bars, or wherever you prefer your hands to rest) varying by 50mm - 2" in old money. That's a lot of difference!
I repeat Colin's assertion, that the saddle (sit-bone position) to pedal dimension is crucial, and set the bars from the saddle, when the saddle's in it's optimum position........but, with saddle length and bars projection being variable, you'll not get it right if you consider saddle nose to bars-top as being a fixed dimension.
Rick - if your bars are now in the correct position for you, and if you were to replace your bars with new ones which had a different projection, then the distance that you quote would be different and to get the resting position for your hands correct again (assuming that they're correct now), you'd have to change to a different stem.
I've edited this because my calculation figures were wrong - I've corrected them now - at least I hope I have!