Tobin Hill: Fiddlin’ Around and Making Excellent Knives
by Christopher Tighe
When Bill Ruple asks you to take up knife making, you have two options: give it your best effort or spend the rest of your life regretting that you didn’t choose the first option. Luckily, for the world of knife users and collectors, Texas-based knife maker, Tobin “Toby” Hill has chosen wisely. Today, Toby is a full-time knife maker and a regular participant in several of the nation’s premier custom knife shows, where he typically sells on the very first day all the pieces he brings. Toby is a member of the South Texas Slipjoint Cartel, a friendly association of about 15 custom makers of traditional folding knives. Like most of the other members of the Cartel, Toby learned the craft from its “godfather” Bill Ruple. How Toby ended up studying in Bill’s shop is a unique story.
As Toby put it, he “grew up cowboy” learning to care for horses, ride, rope and wrangle. Right after completing high school and continuing while in college, Toby worked for two insurance companies and over the course of three years learned the business well enough to start his own independent agency. He built a successful career specializing in providing companies with employee health insurance coverage as part of their benefits packages. Toby’s friendly and helpful nature made him a welcome partner for those companies. Over 40 years, his business matured to the point that about a year ago, his agency became an attractive acquisition for a large insurance corporation. That buyout provided Toby with the financial security he needed to make the transition into full-time knife making, which he had been doing part time. Prior to going full-time, Toby spent his free moments, quite literally, fiddling around.
Toby’s first and continuing passions are as a fiddle player and working as a luthier (pronounced LOO-tee-әr), a maker and repairer of wooden stringed instruments such as guitars and violins. Toby has always liked building things with his hands and learned woodworking at an early age from his father, Bobby Jack Hill. Together they built the home in which Toby and his wife, Sara, now reside and have raised their children. As a hobby while he was selling insurance, Toby would buy beat-up violins at auctions, pawn shops and on eBay, then take them apart, fill cracks in the wood and put them back together into playing condition to sell or give away as gifts to friends and family. His restoration and repair skills became well known in the Pleasanton, Texas community. Local children would often bring him their fiddles that had been damaged. Sometimes the bridge had been shifted out of place, or a crack had developed, or something had come loose, but whatever it was, Toby was able to fix it. Typically, Toby would repair the kids’ instruments for free or a token amount, although when a child displayed a pattern of repeated damage due to carelessness, Toby would raise the repair price to incentivize the child to be more careful. As Toby put it, “I feel it’s my ministry in life to never pass up an opportunity to place a musical instrument in a child’s hands.” Toby’s luthier skills are not limited to repairs; he has built five violins completely from scratch, a painstaking process requiring the utmost care, precision and craftsmanship. These skills gave Toby the foundation upon which he has built his successful cutlery crafting business.
Toby plays both violin and guitar. He and Sara, who is a schoolteacher, have raised three sons, all of whom are Texas A&M Aggies, pursued careers in construction project management, and play music. Toby taught each of his boys to play in the Bob Wills western swing style and this past Thanksgiving, Toby and his boys were together playing for three to four hours entertaining the house full of about 30 people. Toby’s youngest son also performs as the fiddle player for the Josh Abbott Band.
The Hill’s home is on a plot of about 25 acres in Pleasanton, TX. There is a roping arena, now overgrown with mesquite trees, where Toby taught his sons to be cowboys. All of them once enjoyed rodeo competition, team roping and helping cattle ranchers. The home is just a short distance from the home of Bill Ruple, and for the last 30 or so years, the Hills have been close friends with the Ruples, including the families of Bill’s younger brothers. The families attend the same church and, because Bill is a guitar player, he, Toby, and others in the area would often get together to do some picking and playing both at church and each other’s homes. When Toby’s sons were home, Bill would bring his guitar over to the Hill’s so they could all play together. With such a long and close friendship involving music, it was inevitable that Bill would take notice of Toby’s luthier skills.
I asked Bill what prompted him to suggest Toby make folding knives. Bill said, “When Obamacare came along, Toby’s insurance business was facing an uncertain future. I suggested knife making to provide him an alternative income if he needed it. Toby had shown the care and patience needed to build a fiddle from scratch, so I knew he would do well making folders. It takes a delicate touch.”
This has been an extended free preview of the cover article from our April 2025 issue. Premium Online Members can read the whole thing here:
Tobin Hill: Fiddlin’ Around and Making Excellent Knives
Read the full article here