Yes, the procedure would be:
0. remove as much stuff off the bars as you can - Grips, controls, etc. Some may not come off until the bars can be moved side to side to clear the cables and such. Just leave those for now.
1. remove the chrome bolt caps from the 4 spots where the handlebars meet the clamps (a flathead screwdriver to pry them gently up works well here).
2. remove the 4 bolts that were revealed by step 1.
3. lift the top clamps up. If the clamps hadn't moved at this stage, this is where the tap with the rubber mallet would have been used.
4. Remove bars
P.s. Personal Avatars do work, you have to upload them to somewhere on the net, photobucket, etc. then go into your profile and enter the location of the picture. The only gotcha about it is that some of the services have a link that doesn't show a .jpg, .png,.bmp or whatever extension. You must be able to use one of those sorts of links, not the one that doesn't end with an image format sort of extension.