Corbin Lovins started making balisong knives in a backyard shed at his Seymour home about six years ago.
He still finds time to do that today when he’s not working as an inventory manager for Metronet.
The difference now is his knives are sold at the largest knife store in the world, he attends knife shows and gets recognized from his YouTube videos and he has had success competing in knife flipping competitions.
Soon, he will be flying out to Los Angeles, California, to participate in the filming for a documentary being pitched to Netflix that will focus on the history of balisongs, also known as butterfly knives.
One could say his knife line has become his lifeline.
“It’s all I do,” the 24-year-old said. “This is going to be my lifelong thing. This is my purpose.”
Lovins said he tries to keep making knives for his company, Lovins Customs, separate from flipping knives.
He invested a good chunk of money to buy the necessary equipment to make balisongs. He traveled to Fort Wayne to learn about the equipment from a friend.
“It’s super cool because you see those things of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and all those who started out of a shed,” Lovins said.
His five-year plan is to be making knives full time.
“My knife is actually going production where I’m having a factory make them here in the U.S., they’ll come up to me for finishing and I’ll finish them, they’ll go down to Smoky (Mountain Knife Works in Sevierville, Tennessee) and they’re my exclusive dealer, so they are going to get 400 at a time,” he said of his goal.
By the end of 2023, he said he will have 1,200 knives at Smoky — the largest knife store in the world — and he will start a new design.
“From the profits I make from that, I’m hoping in five years quit my job, move to Tennessee and buy a warehouse and start up a knife company,” Lovins said, noting he may venture into making other types of knives.
“Balis are my life, and that’s what I’ll make the most of. I just have so many designs in my head for balis,” he said. “You’re not going to make a single design that everyone loves, but you can make six designs that cover the spectrum, so that’s my hope.”
In terms of attending the knife shows, Lovins said it’s crazy how people come up to him and know who he is. Some have told him they started flipping knives after watching his videos.
“That’s really cool,” he said. “A guy from small town Seymour, Indiana, gets to be the reason that people get into the hobby.”
He also has enjoyed mentoring people along the way, including a fellow Seymour resident, Cole Benton.
Benton read The Tribune’s article on Lovins in the fall of 2021 and reached out to him, and they agreed to meet. Lovins encouraged Benton to do knife flipping at the Seymour Oktoberfest talent show.
After seeing him perform, Lovins told Benton he should go to Smoky Mountain Knife Works for a competition later that month. There, Lovins placed first, and Benton was second.
Earlier this year, Lovins placed fifth out of 48 competitors during Blade Show East in Atlanta, Georgia. He won that competition in 2019 and was seventh last year.
“That is the world’s largest knife show and is also our largest competition. Basically, that is where everyone shows up,” he said. “We have people come from Europe. We have people come from Brazil, southeast Asia.”
For Smoky Mountain Knife Works’ second competition on July 2, Lovins decided to serve as host. In that role, he helped with promotions, prizes, setup and registration. The event also gained an official name, SMKW Summer Bali Bash.
The number of competitors went from nine to 17, and Benton was the winner this time.
“We expect it to get much larger. Since it was the Fourth of July weekend, it was a little smaller,” Lovins said. “We’re also doing one in October, and that one is pretty big. I’ll be competing in that one.”
The weekend before that competition, Lovins will go out to Blade Show West in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to compete. That and Blade Show East are the two largest knife shows in the world, he said.
“Every knife lover goes to them,” he said. “They’ll have competitions for different things.”
Now that he has been in the balisong community for a while, Lovins said he loves it.
“It’s my whole life,” he said. “The cool thing about the bali community is a lot of us are just guys who don’t fit in. For me, I was the small guy who nobody really talked to who just picked it up because Mitchell Hall at The Pines flipped it there, and I was like, ‘Hey, that’s really cool.’”
Hall gave Lovins a balisong for his birthday, and he just fell in love with it.
“We’ve got guys who were on drugs and it helped them get off drugs,” he said. “For me, I’ve got severe anxiety, and it just calms me down. I’ll come out there and I’ll flip for a little bit and I’ll film in front of there and just go for it. Then on the weekends, I make them. It also gives me purpose, like I want to make knives and put my stamp on the community.”
He encourages others to give balisongs a try.
“If you’re interested in something, there are other people that are interested in it, even if it’s as little as butterfly knives,” Lovins said. “We have 20,000 people in the community, so hop in, take a stroll. It’s really fun.”
On the Web
Search for @lovinscustoms on Instagram or view Corbin Lovins’ videos on YouTube.