It is almost a decade since I tracked down Ben Drake, the co-founder of the former popular darts company ELKADART, at his home in Berkshire. Elkadart was a major dart brand from the 1970s and I wanted to learn more about it from the man himself. (Image of Ben with me taken in April 2014. © Moppix. Used with permission.)
Ben was born on 6th September 1940. His father, also Ben, was an engineer, and mother Bertha, known as ‘Birdie,’ a housewife. They later bought a small farm. However, Ben told me that, as far as he could recall, he had always been involved with darts.
Before setting up Elkadart, Ben was a self-employed toolmaker in an environment which provided “advantages of the environment” which enabled him to have access to all kinds of machines such as lathes, a milling machine, spark eroders, pantographs, etc. Ben told me:
“The modern machine, spark eroder, makes forms in metal by using electrodes at Pantograph Precision, Slough. The boss was Latimer Hadleigh, called ‘Lat.’ One day, I said to him, “Can I buy some of this?” I paid him for the material and made Lat a set of darts: darts 3/8th tungsten 5/16th brass (26grm).
[The legendary] Tom Barrett, below, right when using his signature Unicorn, brass, feather flight darts, pre-tungsten circa 1973] used to have a set of pure tungsten; so hard, and take ages to make or sell. With the addition of copper, you could machine as easy as brass. Tungsten alone is brittle. With copper it is more workable but obviously the density of the tungsten was the advantage.
At Lat Hadleigh’s in London, I was using a sparky eroder and electrodes using an element called Elkanite [Which is a copper tungsten material] The Elkanite was fragile/soft but I/we added copper to it and that made it harder.
I made the first set of copper tungsten darts in about 1968 I took them down my local pub and played with them and it ‘went ridiculous’; everybody wanted a set. No one had made copper tungsten darts before me. The whole of my local darts team had them and then people came knocking at the door and one of them was Tom Pope.
Tom had had a job finding him.
“Tom and I went into a patent agent in Slough. He rolled the dart back and forth and said “That’s just a dart.” If we’d have gone to London things might have been so much more different.
I had set myself up in my garage and employed five women making polyester flights and fibreglass shafts…crossed and packeted…folding them packing them…at the same time working with another company to make a special-purpose machine (one second per flight x five machines).
“Hancock’s in London [Mill Street] was the first wholesaler we sold our products to [around 1971/1972]. Hancock’s said they liked it and they wanted a two-weekly delivery. Everything you make. They said “We’ll take the lot.” They wanted exclusivity. I told them ‘We can make a lot more than you’re taking,’ and two weeks later we were getting repeats. It went berserk.”
At that time although working as a spark eroder, Ben had access to a centre lathe where he was making the darts. Working with LT Tool (Les Tucket and Brian Layton) and was extremely well paid. Ben had so many orders for darts that he said he was leaving. Les said, “You must be ****ing mad. I’ll leave your job open for six weeks.”
Ben never went back
“I ran off some darts for Tom [Barrett]. Then he came back again. Then I showed him the polyester flights I was pressing out by hand. The ‘standard’ shape was ‘a number 2’ also pear shape, Rab Smith shape, big one was a ‘Number 5’.
That went berserk too. Tom and Ben bought a Rolls Royce each.
Ben also ran the Slough darts team and entered the London Super league where Ben told me
“We won it (I think) three times. Regularly beat Eric Bristow’s lot. Our team included Geordie Lee, Tony Johnson, Peter Chapman, Barry Luckham, Alan Glazier., Cyril Hayes and Bill Lennard, Cliff Lazarenko (Big Cliff), Bimbo James, Steve Brown, Ken Brown and Dennis Nutt. Ben stated that Alan Glazier was one of the first to foresee darts players becoming professional. Alan redecorated mum and dad’s rooms in Hillingdon, as a favour.”
ELKADART sponsored Peter Chapman (News of the World Champion in 1974) and produced ‘signature’ darts for him. Geordie Lee darts were produced with a ‘special grip, shot blasted.’ Alan Glazier signature darts were also produced and top darter Cyril Hayes worked for Ben.
Recently, former England player, Doug McCarthy, told me
“Ben made my first set of named darts. I was a rep for Ben’s company Reading Darts Supplies (formed to supply pubs/cards) others included Tony Green (‘Mr Bullseye’) [who had introduced Doug to Ben.] I recall breaking the record in one week when I sold £16k worth of equipment.”
Elkadart also sponsored major darts tournaments including the Nations Cup, Ben presenting trophies in the Nation Triples in 1978 to the Australian team, (left to right) Ben, Tim Brown, Matt Banovich and Terry O’Dea. Ben’s support of the sport carried on right up until the end of the 1970s.
At that time, Tom Pope wanted to sell the company so reluctantly, eventually, Ben agreed. Tom called his new company Retriever.
By our meeting in 2014, Ben was long retired from the darts business and was running a fishery near Newbury. He told me, “Fishing was always a passion; ever since I was a boy…,” but still looked affectionally back at his involvement in darts and ELKADART.
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