Bennet Janz is the man behind Ballern Cycleworks, and the winner of the Best Mountain Bike Award at Bespoked Manchester 2025, for his ‘Pressing Iron’ full suspension bike. Bennet is described in Petor Georgallou’s article in Singletrack Issue 160 as ‘built like a horse conditioned by techno’, and ‘Ballern’ is roughly equivalent to ‘beast mode’ or ‘mind off, legs on’. Bennet appears firmly ‘mind on’, despite also apparently operating his entire life in beast mode. The bike alone is impressive enough, but even more so when you hear the life juggling act behind it.
Bennet: The Pressing Iron, is my new downcountry full suspension mountain bike that I brought to Bespoke Manchester 2025. It’s designed for long days in the saddle, in remote locations where there’s not much around, apart from big rocks, that it’s flattening out.
We’ve got a 110mm travel front and back. The rear shock is able to be locked from the cockpit, and the front fork is equipped with a Brain fork from Specialized – so you never have to let go of the handlebars, and remain in control. It features the latest SRAM transmission groupset, which works like a treat.
The mainframe is brazed, and the rear triangle is welded with ER312 welding wire.
We have a Son Dynamo charging setup with new ladder hooks.
The whole bike is equipped with Wizardworks bags, which are custom made especially for this bike.
I’ve seen Bennet’s racks before, but not his bikes. I wonder how much experience he has at bike building.
I make a bike every now and then, but I make bikes next to being part of Bespoked [he’s part of the organising team] and doing a master’s degree, so there is very little time to do bikes. I focus primarily on racks because they’re just fast and I can just bang some out, but in the future there’s going to be more bikes.
Have you made a full suspension bike before?
No, this is my very first one, and it happened last week. A week’s work… more like two weeks worth of work shoved into one week, and I finished it four days ago!
I have to say that that is a very impressive finish for a first full suspension bike and a rush job. What did you do to get that front triangle as polished and smooth and gorgeous as it is?
Blood, sweat and tears, literally. I had an infection in my thumb, so I couldn’t use my right hand really. It was just really annoying because I cut myself on the end mill. But really long hours – and good brazing, so you don’t really need to sand all that much. But it just took countless hours. I was done with everything and then it took another 15 hours of just straight sanding. Yeah, 15 hours, that’s about right, without a break, just one day. I decided to weld the rear so I don’t have to finish all that much.
And apart from just doing the damn thing, what are you most proud of? Or was there like a eureka moment when you were making it?
I’m quite proud of the upper linkage mounts, which I machined myself, which feature countersunk bolts and just sit super snug onto the rocker link. Yeah, I’m super proud of those. And it was the first time I actually did big welds on super thin tubing too, which came out alright, I would say, without having welded for a few months.
And was there something that was just hair-tearingly difficult and frustrating?
I cut the seat stays and I made sure they fitted nicely and then realised the link was flipped down, so I had to do another set because they were too short, which was quite frustrating.
That’s a very German understatement there.
Yeah, I cried. I did cry.
Did you paint that stem as well, or is that just a finish that comes from Bike Yoke?
It’s the Bike Yoke Bar Keeper stem with the raw forged finish, which they were kind enough to give to me, but that’s just the finish of the stem.
And then that’s your rack that’s in there as well?
Yeah, that’s the latest version of the “Sexy Rack”, which now comes welded and made from a bit stronger tubing.
And do you have any plans to make this as a thing that people can buy, or is it just for yourself?
Oh no, 100%. People can phone me up and order one! I will do some testing now. I’m planning a trip to the Balkans in September and if this thing rides as it’s intended to, I will definitely make more because this was quite enjoyable doing.
Can you remember any of the geometry numbers on it for me?
The head tube angle is 66.6 degrees, the seat tube angle is 74.5. It’s got like a 36mm bottom bracket drop and the seat stay length is 437. [The reach] is quite long because I’m quite tall. I think it’s like 520 if I’m not mixing up the numbers. It’s like a 620 top tube. Yeah, it’s quite long!
But you are quite long, so that’s fine. It’s for you, so it should be! I’d say it’s all very impressive. Who did your paint job? [It’s a clear coat with red glitter, that is very hard to photograph!]
The one and only Hagen Wechsel. Dropped it off Sunday night, picked it up Monday morning. Legend.
To me (judging the Best MTB category at the show), the bike displayed a range of skills, incorporated some neat touches of innovation and design, and looked the part of a show bike. It’s pretty scary to imagine what Bennet might be able to do when he has more time on his hands. It turns out that, not only did he build this in a week (though he’d planned it out beforehand), he also had to finish his thesis for a university in auto-engineering at the same time, while also achieving the attendance record needed to prevent some financial penalties (and he was close to the wire). Chapeau to Bennet for living the life of a techno horse, and pulling off this beautiful build. We turned to life more broadly speaking, as a maker of things. I wonder how he become a maker of things?
Well, I was always keen on crafting things. As far as I can remember, as far as I can go back in time… After school, I went home and we had a boiler room, which doubled up as our workshop, and my dad would always just craft things with me in the afternoon. Every single day after school, I was just busy building stuff. It kind of went away for a while, and then as I got into bikes, I didn’t have the money to take my bike to a bike shop, so my dad was like, ‘Just do it yourself. You’ll figure it out’. Now that’s kind of my approach on everything. I’ll just go do it and figure it out along the way.
Was there a skill that was trickiest to learn?
Yeah, I was really struggling with welding for a while. Just the patience and hand-eye coordination. You have to hold the torch, feed the wire, and then control the heat with your foot. So there’s a lot of things to watch out for, and my poor eyesight doesn’t help either.
Do you have a favourite tool?
Ahh, I really, really love my lathe, because it’s just so nice. It’s just doing the work for me, because it’s got auto-feed on the x and y-axis, and it’s just so fun.
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I know you are not yet a maker full-time, so what does a typical day look like for you?
So for me, at the moment, I wake up, I go to school from 8 till 2 p.m., which usually are my Bespoked business hours. And then in the afternoon, I head over to my workshop and usually stay there around five to eight hours every day. Then I come home, cook some dinner for my girlfriend and myself, and then go to sleep and do the same thing again. On the weekends, it’s great, because I’ve got two full work days, which is perfect. I actually get some stuff done.
Do you have a favourite part of the process?
It’s the anticipation of the build. Whenever I get to actually make a full bike, I’m really stoked about building a bike. No matter how stressed I am, the actual process of building it just becomes so enjoyable.
And how long does it take you typically to make a bike?
About a week, maybe like four days. It’s really condensed, but about 60 hours.
Okay, a 60-hour week! What’s the hardest part of being a maker?
It’s feeding the tool addiction and constantly being low on money! And then you come to the realisation that you’ve spent like 20, 30 grand just in tooling, and that’s why you’re poor!
What’s the best part of being a maker?
Being able to create what’s on your mind and seeing it come to life. And coming to the realisation that you’ve got all these tools to make really cool stuff, and they can be used universally. So I don’t only make bikes, but I also do furniture or the staging for theaters. So it’s quite a universal craft. And every now and then getting to be super precise about your work in form of a bike, it’s just really nice.
Is there another maker, not necessarily in bikes, that you particularly admire?
Konstantin Drust.
That was very definitive. Do you owe him money?!
I think I do, actually. But I think he also does owe me money as well!
So what is it about his work that you admire?
He does take pride in his work, but he’s very, very humble about it. He’s just like, ‘Yeah, it’s a bike, and it looks good’. And he’s just like really humble about it, although his craft is second to none. It’s just like, out there, all the way up! And he’s really, really humble about it. I admire that greatly.
Thanks to Bennet for building a beautiful bike, and for helping put on a great bike show. I hear he has a significant hand in organising the after party element of Bespoked Dresden in October. Us mortals probably ought to get in training now. We’ve got 5 months. What the heck will Bennet achieve with all that time to play with? Watch this space, and plan your trip to Dresden, October 10-12.
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