When Anil Gob­ins­ingh was a lit­tle boy and was not al­lowed to play with met­al knives, he made wood­en knives and played with them. Be­fore he was ten years old, he fash­ioned his first "re­al" knife out of a hack­saw blade and a piece of wood for him­self.

As he grew up, Gob­ins­ingh, now 44, nev­er lost his pas­sion or fas­ci­na­tion with blades. When a med­ical con­di­tion pre­vent­ed him from lift­ing heavy ob­jects or do­ing stren­u­ous ac­tiv­i­ty in his pro­fes­sion as a farmer, he turned to his hob­by of knife mak­ing as a form of ther­a­py and re­lax­ation.

Be­tween e-couri­ers' ship­ping fees and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion's tax­es and du­ties for on­line pur­chas­es which may be 1,000 per cent more than the cost of the item, like a knife from the US, an­oth­er op­tion is to buy a cus­tom-made knife built to your spec­i­fi­ca­tions from a lo­cal knife­mak­er or blade­smith at a frac­tion of the price, while sup­port­ing lo­cal crafts­men and sav­ing valu­able forex.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Gob­ins­ingh, from South Oropouche, said "Mak­ing knives end­ed up be­ing a side­line for me. For the past four years, I had a lit­tle med­ical is­sue, I couldn't do any gar­den­ing or lift any­thing heavy and no in­come was com­ing in.

"I al­ways liked mak­ing knives, I be­gan mak­ing a few knives for my­self, some neigh­bours saw them and liked them and they of­fered to buy them from me.

"I end­ed up sell­ing them my knives, I made some more, oth­er peo­ple saw them and want­ed to buy them too and word spread by word of mouth."

He said he re­ceived in­spi­ra­tion from his friends to make and sell knives which he was do­ing be­fore the COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures.

Gob­ins­ingh said dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od, he has even more time to re­fine his knife-mak­ing skills.

He makes knives for hunt­ing, fish­ing, pock­et knives, peo­ple can bring a pho­to­graph, come with their wn de­sign and he will cus­tomise a knife to fit their hand di­men­sions and pur­pose.

Gob­ins­ingh said he nev­er saw the movie The Hunt­ed star­ring Tom­my Lee Jones and Beni­cio Del Toro, but it was a cus­tomer who sub­mit­ted a sur­vival knife de­sign that re­sem­bled the Track­er knife from the movie.

Gob­ins­ingh said he on­ly start­ed sell­ing knives this year and he was nev­er in­flu­enced by movies with knives such as the Ram­bo films star­ring Sylvester Stal­lone or The Hunt­ed.

He said he likes to make knives from stain­less steel, he can re­cy­cle old Chi­nese chop­pers, de­pend­ing on the size of the ma­te­r­i­al, and he can make any size or type of knife.

Gob­ins­ingh said he doesn't have a forge, tools or a lathe to make knives from leaf spring ma­te­r­i­al. He said he learned his craft through tri­al and er­ror and Youtube tu­to­ri­als.

Gob­ins­ingh said his fond­ness for knives was stoked like a blade in a forge when he saw blade­smiths on the In­ter­net and Youtube mak­ing knives and was in­spired by their de­signs and ideas.

He said the pop­u­lar His­to­ry Chan­nel show Forged in Fire, which pits black­smiths against one an­oth­er to cre­ate knives and his­tor­i­cal weapons could on­ly in­spire black­smiths to im­prove their craft.

Gob­ins­ingh said he had no ap­pren­tice, but his son was usu­al­ly on hand to ob­serve him work.

He said knife mak­ing helped him re­lax and be hap­py, he hoped it can grow in­to some­thing he could turn in­to a small busi­ness.

Gob­ins­ingh said he made his own makeshift tools us­ing a wash­ing ma­chine mo­tor to make a belt sander.

He said he didn't know if any­one else in T&T made knives but would like to meet them.

Gob­ins­ingh said he al­so sharp­ens clients' blades and re­pairs and re­places worn-out han­dles for them.

He said he goes by a friend who has a sawmill to source hard­wood like pur­ple­heart and teak to make knife han­dles.

Gob­ins­ingh said he would go by wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tar­ran Ma­haraj for sug­ges­tions on oth­er ex­ot­ic hard­wood species he could use.

He said he was con­stant­ly learn­ing as much as he can about knife mak­ing and oth­er an­cil­lary skills such as sheath mak­ing.