The Problem - Solved

How Maker’s MedKit Started

Born at WorkbenchCon. Built for the bench.

Three years ago

Micheal and Brian were at WorkbenchCon in Atlanta — a room full of makers who spend a lot of time around table saws, grinders, routers, welders, and whatever else is bolted to the bench.

One of us a trauma provider the other a digital desighner, both who love woodworking.

Those things don’t usually share a table.

At WorkbenchCon they did.

During our time there we kept having the same conversation in the hallway, over coffee and even at dinner, the theme:

Shops are full of people who will treat a bad cut with whatever is in the drawer, and what is in the drawer is almost never built for the injury that just happened.

That conversation became Maker’s MedKit.

The Problem, Briefly

How We Designed It

Most shops have a first-aid box.

Most of those boxes are theater.

The drugstore kit is Band-Aids, ointment, and plastic tweezers that will not close on a sliver. The “tactical” IFAK is the other extreme—overstuffed, intimidating, and easy to bury until a finger is already open.

What actually happens at the bench is more specific: limb bleeding, the everyday finger cut, the sliver you cannot get, the burn in the first minutes after it happens.

Those minutes are the job. The kit has to work before EMS arrives, in the hands of a maker—not a medic.

That’s the problem. We built one kit around it.

Why We Designed It

We were tired of watching good shops keep the wrong supplies next to tools that can take a finger off.

Michael knows how a shop actually runs. Brian knows what has to happen in the first one to two minutes of serious bleeding. The kit lives in that overlap: shop-ready. Not range-cosplay. Not an OSHA checkbox.

It has to sit at the bench. It has to be understood by the person standing there—pictures, not a manual. And it has to treat the injuries makers actually get, not the ones a catalog writer imagined.

Where we are Today

We are past the hallway conversation.

The kit is specified for independent makers, fabricators, makerspace users, and small-shop operators — the people who need trauma gear where they work. The kit supplies are locked around controlling bleeding and the daily shop injuries, with a steel instrument set instead of useless drugstore plastic. A pictograph card is included so all you have to do in that emergency is follow the pictures. We are building the hard-case version as a loose-packed shop kit, not a costume pouch.

We have created a branded home as makersmed.com, and already have a refill subscription in the works: so gauze and trauma consumables don’t quietly expire in a drawer.

We still source our products like makers. We still argue over what earns a slot for your bench.

The test has not changed since WorkbenchCon: if this is sitting next to a table saw, can a non-medic use it in the first minutes that matter?

That is the kit we wished was on the bench three years ago.

That is the kit we build now.

Meet the Team

Brian Granvall

Brian is a Trauma/Critical Care PA-C, Paramedic and Navy Corpsman with more than three decades of experience delivering emergency, trauma, and critical care in high-acuity hospital settings and austere remote environments, including Level 1 trauma centers, Africa, Central America, the South Pacific Islands, and North Slope oil exploration sites.

As the owner and lead craftsman of Locust Grove Woodcraft, a custom furniture shop specializing in heirloom pieces crafted from wood, metal, and epoxy, he brings the same precision and problem-solving mindset from the trauma bay into the workshop, bridging clinical expertise with hands-on making to design practical medical solutions for the maker community.

Passionate about giving back to his community Brian has build an emerging non-profit, VetSheds of Idaho, a place where veterans and first responders can go to work with their hands--woodworking, metalwork, repair and other crafts-- in a judgement-free space led by veterans. Fighting isolation through comaraderie.

Trauma/Critical Care PA-C

Navy Corpsman Veteran

Owner of Locust Grove Woodcraft

Micheal Alm

.Michael is a life long woodworker, He started in his dad's workshop at the age of 7, built theater sets in high school, and studied sculpture in college.

In 2014 he started Alm Fab, a design/build company building bespoke furniture for clients' homes. In 2017 he produced his first YouTube video to market the business, but quickly discovered how much he enjoyed video production. In the years since, his channel has grown to a million subscribers across platforms, and he has become a full time content creator.

Michael met Brian at Workbench Con back in 2024, and was excited by his idea for a top quality first aid kit designed for the maker community. Having a lot of friends with horror stories and missing digits made him ask what can he do to make this a reality. That began a multi year journey to make the best medical kit on the market for makers in their workshops.