Extended Free Preview: Michael Hobbs: Accidental Full-Time Maker

Michael Hobbs: Accidental Full-Time Maker
By Christopher Tighe

The beautiful lines, careful grinds and lovely handles of Michael Hobbs’ knives disguise the fact that he has been making knives for a short 31/2 years and has been mainly self-taught. While he had plans for growing his hobby into an income supplement and dreams of becoming proficient enough to make a living at it, the timeline accelerated faster than he dreamed or intended. Michael is certainly not the only maker to turn a knife-making avocation into a vocation, but in Michael’s case he says dropping that “a” was purely an accident. It has been said that our individual lives are best described by all those experiences and evolutions that were never planned, and this is proving to be the case for Michael’s.

Born on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington, Michael’s family moved to Tennessee as he was entering his teen years in the mid-’90s, to be closer to his maternal grandfather. Michael’s father was a construction superintendent who taught Michael how to work with his hands. He also brought home drawings and plans that he showed Michael how to read. Michael always loved the outdoors and the woods, so the use, love, and fascination with knives as a woodsman’s tool led him, like so many other young boys, to build his own knife. His first attempts were pieces of scrap metal that he shaped with hand files. While he loved the creative process, he didn’t care for the hand files and soon upgraded to a 4” hand-held angle grinder, taking the first step on a career path not yet visible to him.

Michael’s first paying job was as a construction laborer. Even as a teenager he often helped out directing other craftsmen since he was skilled at reading the drawings. He worked his way up in the construction trades to become a superintendent on million-dollar projects and also became a project safety director. But due to the boom /bust cycles of construction work, he sought out a career change and built on his safety training by attending Western Kentucky University to become a certified EMT. He loved working as a paramedic and had plans to make it his life-long career. Michael spent five years working as a paramedic just south of Frankfurt, Kentucky to fulfill his obligations for his EMT training but always with a goal to return to his family in Tennessee and there continue as a paramedic and hopefully expand his knife-making hobby to supplement his public-service income.

Michael credits Burt Foster with giving him the early push he needed to further develop his blade-crafting skills. He had visited Burt’s shop in Bristol, Virginia and brought with him a few of his knives for feedback. He said Burt gave him honest criticism, several points of instruction on what could be done better and, most importantly, encouraged him to keep at it, saying he had a “good eye” and showed promise.

Michael’s primary sources for his knife-making education were YouTube videos, most notably, those of Mastersmiths Kyle Royer and Jason Knight. He took Jason’s online courses to learn forging and online courses from Kyle Royer to hone his fit and finish skills.

As he continued in his hobby, Michael upgraded to a 2”x72” Ameriblade belt grinder and, after getting comfortable with doing stock-removal knives with it, decided he wanted to try making damascus steel. So he bought a small forge. His first shop was a 5’ by 10’ shed behind his Kentucky house. He did his cutting and grinding in the shop but he had to drag the forge out of the shed and onto the concrete patio for use, then let it cool down before returning it to the shed. Final assembly work was done in the kitchen and living room.

The commercial growth of Michael’s hobby began with his second knife that he traded for “a nice cutting board.” Later, when Michael’s partner in the paramedic unit was leaving the squad to return to school, Michael decided to make a knife as a parting gift. The knife was a basic drop-point hunter, which his buddy used to skin his first deer. His friend was so impressed with the knife that when he visited Michael a few years later, he commissioned a recurve hunter as a gift for his father. Word of Michael’s knives began to spread within the local EMS community and among fellow hunters and woodsmen and, little by little, requests and orders for knives began to roll in.

This article appears in the August 2024 issue of KNIFE Magazine. It has been a while since I have done one of these previews, and if you want to read the whole thing, become a Premium Online Member today. [Click Here]

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Want to learn more about Michael? He participated in our 5 from the Grinder series as well…

5 from the Grinder: Michael Hobbs (Hobbs Custom Knives)