Quite a few wood-adorned bikes drop into our inbox these days, but few make it online. It’s an effect that can go so wrong, so easily?but if you can combine craftsmanship with restraint and good taste, the results are spectacular.
Iowa-based Mike Gustafson is a furniture designer by trade, so he knows his way around a block of wood. After hours, he builds motorcycles as Monnom Customs; this is his second build, and also the second to use wood.

His first was an electric blue Honda CB550 with a wooden seat, which landed on our Bikes of the Week list nearly a year ago. ?I was not expecting the amount of attention that bike received,? Mike tells us.
?The wooden seat was a very polarizing option on that build. I originally made the seat out of scrap Cherry wood I had at my studio, because I couldn’t afford the $350 upholstery.?
Polarizing or not, the ‘M1’ garnered enough interest to land Mike two commissions. So for the ‘M2’?a 1973 Honda CB350 cafe racer?he decided to see just how far he could push the use of wood on a motorcycle.
This time around, Mike didn’t just shape the seat pan from wood?he built a full-blown Walnut fairing too. “Most of the furniture commissions I build have curved surfaces,? he says, ?and I tend to utilize a lot of highly figured veneer.”

It took some experimenting to get there?especially when it came to mounting everything. ?There were several challenges involved with getting the fairing mou...