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.

“Every picture I take with my bike in it is a killer picture,” said Caleb Campbell, 19 of Bend, Ore. “No matter how bad of a photographer I am.”

Hoisting a block of weathered, rough-cut lumber to his shoulder, Campbell explains how the bikes come from something that would otherwise go to waste.

“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.

“We’d love to sell a bike or two,” Campbell said. “They are pretty much all in the family, but we love riding them.”

That’s why the father-son duo joined about 200 other hopeful exhibitors at the recent North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Sacramento.

The show, which just wrapped up its 15th session, is a chance for aspiring bike and bike part makers to network with each other, retailers and bike enthusiasts without being overwhelmed by mass market brands that dominate most bike industry events.

Most of the products at the show are borne from the minds of obsessive cyclists who want to make riding bikes look and feel better, as opposed to major bike manufacturers who answer to the demands of corporate marketing departments and major investors.

“What makes this show great is that everybody in this place has brought their best work, their eye candy, their bike porn,” said Debra Banks, founder of Rivet Cycle Works, which makes leather bike saddles.

Banks, a long-distance rider and pro-biking activist in Sacramento, founded Rivet because she found saddles from other companies just didn’t sit right with her and some of her cycling friends.

Banks said nothing sucks the fun out of long rides than pain and discomfort in the hands, feet or butt – the three spots a rider’s body contacts a bike.

“The very first time I did one of these long rides, I ended up with something like second-degree burns in my undercarriage, if you will,” Banks said. “While that healed up pretty quickly, the mindset was that was never going to happen again.”

Like so many other builders at the show, Banks is a bicycling evangelist who makes it her business to share her passion with others.

In Banks’ case, that means crafting leather saddles that form-fit to riders’ bodies and make cycling a better experience.

The form-fitting saddles helped Banks get back on her bike after a drunk driver struck her and four other cyclists during a ride in 2015.

Banks suffered severe injuries and was left with a leg-length discrepancy. Her saddles, she said, helped when she returned to cycling because their form-fitting nature allows her pelvis to adjust and offset the discrepancy.

It’s something that can benefit riders of all body types, even if they haven’t been injured, Banks said.

“If you can be comfortable riding your bike around the world, why should you not be comfortable going around the block or riding to the grocery store?” she said.

For Johnny Coast, a bike-maker from Brooklyn, N.Y., the path to building bikes started in childhood.

When he was 12, Coast learned welding from his dad, who ran an auto body shop.

Coast applied those early welding skills to further his education at United Bicycle Institute, a school for bike builders and mechanics.

From there, he studied under Koichi Yamaguchi, a Japanese frame builder who made frames for the U.S. Olympic team.

Coast’s bikes show he’s put the training to good use.

He uses bright colors, shiny fenders and fine metalwork to build bikes that resemble what would have been popular with European touring riders in the 1960s and ‘70s.

The sleek looks of Coast’s shiny bikes stood out against the burly, matte-colored mountain bikes on thick rims with fat tires that were popular at the show.

And while Coast builds bikes for customers who can order them on his website, he’s also building them for himself.

“Maybe the shiny aesthetics don’t match a lot of what is here today, but it is what I like,” he said. “So, I guess I’m going for what I like.”

While Banks is focused on saddles, builder Rob English works to make entire bicycles for people who are poorly served by mass market bikes.

English, of Eugene, Ore., said corporate bike manufacturers overbuild their products because they assume it needs to support people who weigh as much as 250 pounds.

The bikes might work well for some, or even most, people. But they aren’t good for others, English said.

For petite women who ride competitively or just spend a lot of time cycling, the overbuilt bikes are particularly problematic.

“It is not going to ride very nice, it is not going to feel really good,” English said. “I can take that rider and build something that is going to fit them really well so they are comfortable and efficient; it is also going to handle really well and feel really good.”

While the show has plenty of builders looking to make a name for themselves and their bikes, there are a few old hands who have spent decades perfecting their craft.

Roland Della Santa of Reno started building steel racing frames in 1970.

Della Santa, whose frames bear his name, built frames for former Washoe Valley resident and three-time Tour De France winner Greg LeMond.

The LeMond connection and craftsmanship of his frames make Della Santa a renown among middle-age cycling enthusiasts, many of whom stopped Della Santa during the show to pose for photos.

Della Santa was happy to indulge bike show attendees with stories and bike-building tips. But he was also quick to give credit to the people who really make bikes go, the riders.

“It is not the bike, it is the rider,” Della Santa said. “But I told Greg LeMond to tell everybody it’s the bike not the rider, that’s good for sales.”

Benjamin Spillman covers the outdoors and environment in Northern Nevada, from backcountry skiing in the Sierra to the latest from Lake Tahoe's ecosystem. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.

More: