Hammie Horn - Custom Knifemaker, South Africa
About my passion
I am Hammie Horn and I am addicted …to knifemaking.
No seriously, my fiancé has all her days to get me to knockoff after a day’s work, because I just want to carry on what I’m doing.
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I think this started when I was a seven years old and my dad gave me my first knife. It triggered something in me and I started drawing knives, saving up and buying every knife that I could afford from my little bit of pocket money. I was going to make knives when I grow up.
Later in life I joined my dad’s woodworking company. We hunted together and worked together. My dream still alive while working with the wood every day, seeing it come to life in my hands.
I loved the smell, the feel and the look.
It wasn’t enough though, I wanted to get closer to nature and I became a professional hunter.
I spent hours with clients, foreign and local, in the South African bushveld until 2020 happened.
I was stuck at home. Stuck drawing pictures of knives and polishing pieces of wood that I had gathered over the years. I was going to try and create an income from knifemaking. The dream was very much alive.
Close to the end of 2021 I made my first knives and actually sold them. I was in my seventh heaven. I wasn’t sure if it was a viable option to put food on the table, but I was willing and able to give it my all and soon I realized that I gathered some valuable information during the years. I learnt what a good hunting knife would feel like. I already knew from way back when what it would look like, I just had to look at all the pictures I had drawn. I learnt how the wood would react to different processes that I put it through. The wood was like putty in my hands. I moulded and polished the most beautiful African hardwoods into pieces of art. Shimmering and glistening in the sunlight.
But I needed to set myself apart from other knifemakers and decided to try my hand at spine filing. I had a couple of files in a box, made a few designs and put it on the steel.
I absolutely love what I do. How amazing that I can make a living from the one thing that I have always wanted to do? That I can spend my time doing what I love instead of working only to put food on the table. Believe me when I say, I know how fortunate I am and I thank God every day for the path that I am on.
Every intricate little curl on the spine of a hunting knife, was an expression of my creative side, the part of me that was left behind by my mom who sadly passed when I was not even a teenager yet. She was a painter and a poet. My own two poetry bundles on the shelf and paintings on the wall, proof that I inherited her creativity and that it lives on in me.
