Tougher than carbon
When people see a Celilo bike for the first time, they usually start with the obvious “Wow, it’s wood!” and then often "but I bet I would break it. And sure, the appearance is the part that catches the eye, and people have good reason to question the strength of a bike made out of an alternative material. There's been plenty of experiments with bamboo, wood and other materials that haven't been the most robust. We know better than anyone how hard it is to make a bike that can really stand up to what people do to it, heck we spent years learning all the ways you can break a wooden bike before we were ready to sell anything.
Most cyclists have heard us talk about vibration damping. Wood is great at taking the buzz out of rough roads, spreading out the chatter so you feel more flow and less fatigue. Any review of a wooden or bamboo bike will point out the ride as being incredible, it's not just our bikes that do that. What's different about our bikes is the strength, and especially, toughness.
Inside the frame, our bikes use layers of carbon fiber and Kevlar-the same materials that top end mainstream bikes and other superlight, superstrong things are made of. Carbon brings stiffness and strength. Kevlar adds impact resistance. But both of those materials have an Achilles heel: they’re brittle. If you ding straight carbon, it can crack. Kevlar will stretch, but it doesn’t like sharp impacts. A good rock hit mountain biking or even an unfortunate drop at the wrong angle with an ultralight road bike can compromise the carbon and total the frame.
That’s where the wood comes in, an armor for the carbon. The outer shell of CNC carved wood absorbs the sudden hits and spreads out the load before it ever reaches the carbon and Kevlar inside. The result? You get a frame that’s as strong as carbon but much tougher against the kinds of knocks and bumps that happen in real-world riding. It's true that the wood will dent, sometimes gouge, or chip, but it doesn't compromise the strength of the bike or the damping properties, and when those wounds fill with dirt, oil and street crud they end up looking even better than they did before. Like someone actually uses this bike.
It’s a little like combining a Formula One chassis with a baseball bat. You don’t have to baby these bikes. You just need to ride them.