As an avid outdoorsman growing up in western Michigan, I began collecting knives when I was a kid. Most of the knives I had bought back then didn't come with sheaths, and just before deer season of 1989 I decided to make a sheath for my favorite hunting knife. I bought a few of the basic tools from Tandy Leather Company, along with a thick piece of vegetable tanned leather. The sheath was very basic and functional, but not too pretty. Since I had the tools, I started making more sheaths for my other knives and subsequently got better and better at it. 

That's how my passion of leather crafting began, which has now turned into an obsession. Just ask my wife! She's always complaining about the newest leather tools I buy, as well as the expense of the high quality leather I stricktly use.  

Most everything I make is completely handmade and hand sewn, or Saddle Stitched. I do use an industrial leather sewing machine on a few of my products, such as belts and my economy watch straps.

What had been a passionate hobby turned into a business in 2016. I own and operate another business Mon. - Thur. 9:00am - 5:00pm called, New Way Hearing Aids, Inc., where I'm a practicing Audioprosthologist, and along with my wife Linda, and son-in-law Eric, we run Michael Knapp Leather most of our waking hours after that.

Until focusing on Custom Handmade Watch Straps and our YouTube channel 'Strap a Watch', our speciality had been making Full Grain Leather Placemats. Nobody else really does these, and we still offer these for sale. They are very time consuming, and a lot of leather and materials are used in order to make them, which means they aren't cheap. However, we guarantee them for a lifetime! 

​All of the leathers and skins that we use are of the highest quality in the world.