‘Bike porn’: World’s top builders turn salvaged lumber and sleek steel tubes into bicycles

By Benjamin Spillman
Reno Gazette Journal
March 29, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States, US West

For Caleb Campbell, the beauty of riding a wooden bicycle is, well, the beauty. Campbell and his dad, Scott Campbell, handcraft frames from Oregon white oak they salvage from the forest floor.  To transform leftover lumber into bikes capable of ripping down trails and gravel roads, it takes hundreds of hours of work. The result is a frame that, thanks to the carbon-lined interior, performs like a modern mountain bike but looks like an exquisite wood carving. “There are white oak trees growing everywhere, every time someone builds a house, they have to cut one down,” Campbell said. “If it didn’t go to us, it would go to a burn pile.” The bikes might look like something worthy of an art exhibit, but the Campbells would rather have them hanging in garages. They’re hoping their business, Celilo Cycles, named for the Columbia River’s once-mighty Celilo Falls, can expand beyond friends and family and become an established provider of sustainably produced bikes. 

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