Less I sound cynical (I am), I should expound a little bit on my position of finding painful certain death a more rewarding proposition than to hire an employee. Completely aside from my personal motivation to even do this, which is to craft something by myself and divest myself of all the soul killing circumstance of my day job.
I manage roughly 110 employees in manufacturing. 7 supervisors over 3 shifts and 15 or 20 job titles. I just spent the last week bouncing around career fairs and visiting technical colleges trying to recruit more. My position in this case, is that you can't afford an employee. Knowing nothing about your business other than that you aren't full time, and that you live in Washington which I'm guessing is very similar to Oregon and California in it's labor laws, it's courts similar in their decision making, it's bureaucracies similar in their prejudices (meaning in any arbitration you'll be wrong unless overwhelmingly proven otherwise and possibly still then, just for having the gall to give someone a job).
First, are you insured? In WI it's common for insurance companies to provide an option for rural folks like me that cover small business and to some extent employees due to the commonality of small family farms. I don't know if that's the case in WA. What about workers comp? If you fly without, are you prepared to cover an injured employee out of your own pocket? Note it does not matter how stupid what he did was, how much it was his fault, or how many times you told him to quit putting his dick in the press, if he squeezes it off, someone (you) is going to pay.
What will you pay this apprentice? As I said above I imagine WA state has something to say about that. Are you ready to give him a 7.2% raise right off the bat? Because that's your portion of his SS tax. So that's at minimum $12.34/hour out of your pocket for his labor. I don't know about you, but I don't make $12/hr on my knives in all but a few cases. I know for a fact my productivity will be hindered to some extent training someone. Let's say I do find someone who will show up when they say they will (they won't) and who will learn to do some of the more rudimentary tasks quickly (they can't) without screwing them up like a throw of the dice (they will).
How long is that guy going to be happy burning strips of bandsaw blade while you do all the "fun" stuff? How many hours of hand sanding will he endure before he suddenly forgets what a good clean finish is and begins to argue about what is "good enough?" Pretty soon he begins to lament even showing up more than half the time he's supposed to and begins devising ways with which to even the scales in his perception, because you were such an asshole to offer him a job in the first place (he could be playing call of duty right now). If he's a reasonable sort of fellow he'll just rob your copper and anything portable enough to fit into his car when you're at work. If he's too clever for his own good he'll fake an injury in your shop. If he's extremely nefarious he'll get hurt outside of work and then pretend to have gotten hurt at your place. (This is the point you begin looking for hobbies that don't involve employees)
I associate with or have associated with a lot of different groups of people, gun groups, gunsmith groups, machinist groups, political groups, product interest groups, various education groups, on and on. The knifemaker community has been without exception, the most generous, accepting, and easy to get along with group of people I've ever been part of. Even my experience on Forged in Fire was like that, drop me into a group of 4 people who were chosen by some New York casting company and hadn't ever even been aware of each other previously, and we got along like we'd known each other our whole lives. I've thought a lot about that since then, and it's something more than the fact that we all like to make knives. In fact, I don't think it has anything to do with knives.
I think it's because we all go out into the shop and spend our time and money trying to learn how to perfect a craft. We ALL know what abrasives cost. What tools and fuel cost. What waste costs. We ALL know how it feels to lose something we poured blood and sweat into, and when that happens, we turn it into a lesson to prevent it from happening again. We don't think the makers we look up to owe us anything and we're ecstatic and appreciative when they do share their own learned lessons with us, even in the occasions we didn't get the answer we hoped for like "keep sanding till all the scratches are gone" or "you just have to keep practicing because there's no magic method."
If you had any idea how rare the above is in the general populace, how incorrigibly stupid the majority are, how maniacally entitled most are, how many remain willfully ignorant of the simplest calculus: nothing in life is free - well, you'd be a cynic too.
Now, I'm not saying every employee is like this, or that every person. I guarantee there's a kid in your local high school that would be a perfect fit for you. He's honest and interested, and smart enough to want to learn. His parents didn't raise him by proxy through the television and he has some idea of what work means. He'll understand that the $11.50 an hour you're paying him comes with a bunch of knowledge and opportunity and he'll make the most out of it.
The problem is you may have better odds at the roulette table betting it all on black than finding him the first shot, unless you can rig the game through association. That's the essence of the idiom "It's not what you know, it's who you know." The idiom is wrong. It should be, "It's not what you know, it's what they know about you."
Just understand the risks involved (and how to mitigate them through LLC, personal property in trust, etc etc). The reward may not be worth it.
