Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Welch.
Michael, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have always been curious about how things work and are made so over the years my hobbies and careers have always revolved around working with my hands. Some of the projects were born out of necessity like my first coffee table, I just simply needed one. Some projects were more elaborate or just for the love of learning but I always jumped around until I found knife making. I believe this is “my thing” because it combines everything that I enjoy from all of my endeavors over the years. Handle sculpting, metallurgy, welding, material science, the creative combinations of steel, wood and all kinds of other stuff. My professional career was as a chef so it just made perfect sense to focus on culinary knives. It turns out that using one everyday in the kitchen didn’t translate to knowing how to make them right away and it was a big learning curve, but being out in the shop is my favorite place to be.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The challenges have changed over the 3 or 4 years but there is always something I’m working to get past. When I first started it was just simply making them, the amount of time, money and energy that goes into a knife of any size is significant and it doesn’t take much to completely ruin it. They were pretty rough when I first started but luckily I had a lot of great friends who gave me a lot of support from the very beginning.
The current challenges are mostly to do with promotion. Creating content is a whole extra set of skills and really slows the process down but it’s something you have to do to be relevant. Some of the social media platforms just integrated an AI screening policy that is picking up all sorts of artisan accounts as dangerous so our work isn’t being shared the way it was a year ago. I look at it as a motivator to start doing something different to stand out so it’s not all bad.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I specialize in handmade culinary knives and sayas and I really focus on making tools that are beautiful but can also be put to the toughest of tests in the kitchen. I’m known for a lot of very colorful, bold aesthetics and patterns as well as unique shapes and the use of magnets instead of pins in my sayas. I am playing around with incorporating different materials like wooly mammoth tusks and compressed fabrics into everyday items like cake testers, spoons and oyster shuckers.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My biggest mentors are Nick Riley of Raydens Workshop out of North Park and Tre Hill from 3rd Hill Customs out of Atlanta. They are both incredible craftsman and some of the nicest guys you will ever meet, I’ll be lucky if I ever get halfway to where they are at as makers. In the beginning it’s really overwhelming, there are so many tools and methods, differing opinions on how to get the results you are looking for. They really took the time to go step by step with me whenever I was having a problem, or just help me brainstorm solutions in general.
Pricing:
- Depends on materials mostly but $275-550 is my normal range
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Colibri_knives
- Other: Email – michael@colibriknives.com
