His Dark Materials

Ben Farver made his reputation building steel frames in Portland, Oregon, but in 2011 he swapped his brazing torch for pre-preg sheets and went all-in on carbon fibre. He shows Cyclist what drew him to the dark side

- James Spender

Tell me about your perfect ride. Where would you go? That might sound like an excerpt from a psychiatrist’s transcript, but it is in fact one of 13 questions Argonaut founder Ben Farver poses to a prospective customer before a conversation about their new bike has even got started.

‘The questionnaire paints a picture of them as a cyclist. Geometry is just a small part of a custom bike. A bike can only be so stiff and so light, so for me the real opportunity in bike design, and a bike’s lasting value, is how it feels on the road,’ Farver says with an earnest smile.

It wasn’t always the case that Farver looked to influence one of his creations so directly. He came to frame building in a roundabout way, taking a metalworking course for fun after completing a degree studying history. However, it wasn’t until 2007 when, inspired by other frame builders he’d seen in Portland, Farver decided that building bike frames ‘seemed like something I might quite like to do’.