The bicycle's original predecessor, the Draisine, was made of wood nearly 200 years ago, but modern bikes made from trees are few and far between these days. This September, a Montreal trio called Picolo Vélo will be launching a crowdfunding campaign for the Picolo V1 frame that is made from ash.
Pierre Laplante created Picolo Vélo, and Montreal woodworkers Nicolas Goupil and Loïc Dehoux of the cabinet company AMIK ébénisterie are now partners.
The first prototypes were built at AMIK ébénisterie.
So why wood? Picolo Vélo touts a few things about the material as being beneficial: it has a much lower carbon footprint than alloy or carbon, and it has natural vibration-absorbing properties.
The frame is made with two triangular pieces of ash that are hollowed out to decreased the weight to 2.6kg for a size small, Dehoux told BikeRadar. "We are still working on prototypes, but we think we will sell the frame for around CAN$4,500," he said.
As for the choice of ash tree, Picolo Vélo is reclaiming the wood from trees chopped down in Montreal because of beetle infestation.
While Picolo Vélo claims to be the first Canadian company building road bike frames from wood, they aren't the only ones worldwide working with trees.
Renovo Bikes in Portland, Oregon, has been making wooden bikes for a decade, Connor Wood Bicycles works with ash and walnut in Denver, Colorado, Williams Cycles hand-carves the Urban One in the UK, and Skuut, in a throw-back to that original Draisine kick-bike design, offers wooden balance bikes for tykes.
