KNIFE Magazine August 2024 issue

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.