Micron Knives

[MicronKnives]

My name is Jack, I own and operate a CNC machine shop in Pennsylvania. Follow along to see how I was thrown into a controversial knife manufacturing story, and how I make it into my own knife company.

Earlier this year I was contacted by Guy, owner of Survive! Knives out of Gettysburg PA. He was hoping to subcontract some five axis grinding work to my shop. We did not have those capabilities, but I went down to Gettysburg to see if we could offer any other services. Upon arriving I had realized there was much more to the story.

Some background on Survive! Knives. This was a company that, for the last 10 years, had pre-sold knives and missed deliveries. Many customers were waiting years to get their orders. The company moved multiple times across the country, switching from OEM manufacturing to their own manufacturer in the process. This company also got their knife in the hands of some popular youtubers that more than tripled their sales. Thousands of knives were pre-sold and paid for. Survive! then tried to manufacture these knives on their own, moving from Idaho to Pennsylvania in the middle of it all. Years go by with customers still waiting for their knives, while the money went dry, lenders started knocking. This is when Guy reached out to me.

There was no feasible way for my machine shop to help Survive!, as they were beyond a capital investment being the saving grace. I made an offer on all of the machines, and in Mid 2024 had purchased all of Survive!'s equipment. This equipment included a beautiful waterjet, blanchard grinder, Haas VF2, Haas VF3, tumbler, blast cabinets, and plenty of support equipment. All of which were perfect additions to my machine shop. I then purchased a small facility, as this was too much equipment for our current location.

Now I had a ton of new equipment and a recently purchased building (that was literally falling down). We started seeing the niche that Survive! filled, and over the summer had decided to create our own knife company.

Introducing Micron Knives. I, along with my parents and two full time machinists, are going to try our hand at making high end knives! Our goal is simple. Make precise knives with the best materials and the best customer experience. We are currently prototyping and preparing for manufacturing. The last three months were spent fixing up the new (old) building. The next three months are going to be setting up the machinery and starting production. Ask me any questions you have, and follow this thread if you'd like updates!

 

[SharpBits]

Maybe you can expound a bit on your background and why you wanted to get in to manufacturing knives.

 

[MicronKnives]

My background is in applied engineering, focusing on CNC machining, robotics, and quality management. For the last four years, I have run a small cnc shop where we focus on prototyping for the local electronics companies.

My knife background starts as most do. Making file knives with a homemade forge and pallet wood. It expanded when my brothers and I purchased a forge and anvil, and further expanded when we found classes at the scranton historical society. I am personally into culinary knives more than anything, but have a collection including folders from spyderco, kershaw, CRKT, and way too many hand made attempts at fixed blade knives and damascus blanks.

Micron Knives is not my attempt at artisan hand-crafted knives. My goal is to make the tools that just work. My passion is machining, and there is art in precision.

 

[SharpBits]

Excellent! Knife guys like knives made by fellow knife guys!

 

[jfk1110]

Cool Best of luck.........Best to have a priest bless your shop tools and shop before day one of WORK.....
Just to keep the survive devil away.......Kidding aside, looking forward to see what your future endeavors are.

 

[MicronKnives]

Cool Best of luck.........Best to have a priest bless your shop tools and shop before day one of WORK.....
Just to keep the survive devil away.......Kidding aside, looking forward to see what your future endeavors are.

We are performing exorcisms on every single piece, don't you worry

 

[SharpBits]

As someone else said, you are not reading the room. S!K is a villain around here and joking about it will not make friends. I'd suggest never mentioning them again and solely focus on what you are bringing to the community.

 

[l1ranger]

As someone else said, you are not reading the room. S!K is a villain around here and joking about it will not make friends. I'd suggest never mentioning them again and solely focus on what you are bringing to the community.

100% this.
don't say anymore about it - start making knives, good knives - and get them out in the community and leave any connections to anything else in the past.

you've got a long hill to climb, and its gonna be tough if you keep bringing up a connection to a failed fraudster

 

[MicronKnives]

As someone else said, you are not reading the room. S!K is a villain around here and joking about it will not make friends. I'd suggest never mentioning them again and solely focus on what you are bringing to the community.

You are absolutely right. It was a calculated decision to come out waving a flag, and one that I did not take lightly. I am excited to show the knife community what we are made of, and I want to be very transparent from the start. It would be a stain on my reputation to be anything but completely honest, especially with a community that was burned so badly.

Not everyone will be on board, but that's not what will stain my reputation. It would be hiding the way we came about that would stain the reputation. Now that it's out there, maybe some people will follow along. There's no big business here, it's my parents and I trying to do what we know best.

 

[coolbreezy37]

I agree with above posters, I honestly believe that Guy got overwhelmed in the early days of s! (survive doesn’t deserve a capitol letter anymore) and then became downright nefarious with criminal intent. Bottom line is he’s a thief and it’s been well documented here for several years. Coming to the very site that has been actively compiling facts about their fraudulent actives and posting in that very thread wasn’t the wisest move. Him and his ex wife kept the con going strong since around 2014-15. You seem well intentioned, but a history and fact check of their Ponzi scheme history could’ve saved you the grief of being associated with one of the worst knife making outfits in history.

 

[The True North]

As someone else said, you are not reading the room. S!K is a villain around here and joking about it will not make friends. I'd suggest never mentioning them again and solely focus on what you are bringing to the community.

I find honestly and transparency refreshing and valuable.



Edit: The situation is sketchier and more questionable than I originally assumed. Much remains to be seen.

 

[SharpBits]

What a strange take. Survive is gone and Micron owns all of their old equipment.


If anyone isn't reading the room, it is the people in this thread conflating the mere mention of Survive with being somehow affiliated with them.



I find honestly and transparency refreshing and valuable, actually.

I was expressing what is happening here. Go see the other thread. Whether or not it should be happening is beyond the point. It is happening so it has to be managed somehow.

 

[The True North]

I was expressing what is happening here. Go see the other thread. Whether or not it should be happening is beyond the point. It is happening so it has to be managed somehow.

Upon reading the newest in the other thread, I will remain cautiously optimistic.


Until proven otherwise, I will give the benefit of the doubt that this is an honest attempt at transparency and not Guy in a trench coat.

 

[SharpBits]

Upon reading the newest in the other thread, I will remain cautiously optimistic.


Until proven otherwise, I will give the benefit of the doubt that this is an honest attempt at transparency and not Guy in a trench coat.

We are in agreement.

 

[MicronKnives]

Upon reading the newest in the other thread, I will remain cautiously optimistic.


Until proven otherwise, I will give the benefit of the doubt that this is an honest attempt at transparency and not Guy in a trench coat.

I would expect nothing less

 

[The True North]

I would expect nothing less

Gotta admit though, this whole thing is extremely strange.

Saying Survive! made the best fixed blade knives you've ever held - as dubious a statement as I've ever heard - coupled with the fact that you now own..his dog? And are being extremely apologetic to his very obviously criminal business practices. My man, your logo even looks like the Survive! logo.

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

There are countless hours of reading that an outsider can do in order to catch up on the Survive! situation. I had the unique opportunity to be thrown into the middle of it all last summer. Hopefully you'd all like to hear about it.

I am the owner and operator of a small precision machine shop in Pennsylvania. I am the one that purchased the equipment from Survive! last summer.

I was looking to increase our capacity as a machine shop. Survive! had a beautiful waterjet, tumbler, blanchard, VF3, VF2, blast cabinets, and more, all perfect additions to our current capabilities. We made an offer and ended up purchasing the equipment. I then purchased a building to house all the equipment, as we couldn't even get the vf3 into our shop, and spent the last few months making that place habitable (It's in horrible condition, but cheap).

During all of this, I couldn't help but admire the quality of Survive! knives. The machinist in me truly appreciated the insane level of quality, and the business owner in me saw how and why Survive! filled a niche in the knife world. I have all the equipment, I have the fixturing, I know the process, here we go!

Introducing, Micron Knives! A knife company born from a small family owned and operated American machine shop. Our goal is precision knives, made from the best materials, with the best processes, sold with the best customer service, and never ever sold presale.

Ask me anything, but this is a Survive! thread. I'll start with some answers to questions that were never asked, but might be.

We do believe that Survive! made the best fixed blade knives we've ever handled.
We did not purchase any of the inventory, nor do we know where it is, or what will happen to it all.
We do not know what Guy is up to or where he is.
We truly believe that Guy's ultimate goal was to produce the knives that were ordered. We came across zero indications that he was intentionally scamming people. We also came across zero evidence or indications that he had made out with the money from the preorders.
The money that we paid for the equipment went directly to the lenders in accordance with state law, even covering the loans on equipment that had been previously sold and not paid off.
We only purchased the equipment, not the business. We cannot help those of you who never received their knives, and we do not believe that Survive! will ship any more knives.
I was indeed offered Guy's dog, Olive. We are inseparable. As soon as I can upload a photo I will upload one of her. She was not part of the purchase negotiations LOL.
We want to produce knives VERY similar to Survive!'s designs, as we think they were the best. Sprinkle in a little customer service and some good business practices, we think you'll like our knives.

Do you / did you have some sort of personal relationship with Guy?

 

[MicronKnives]

Gotta admit though, this whole thing is extremely strange.

Saying Survive! made the best fixed blade knives you've ever held - as dubious a statement as I've ever heard - coupled with the fact that you now own..his dog? And are being extremely apologetic to his very obviously criminal business practices. My man, your logo even looks like the Survive! logo.



Do you / did you have some sort of personal relationship with Guy?

I am not apologetic towards his criminality, I just cannot offer evidence. I was not around long enough to gather any, I'm sure if I was there long enough then I would have seen it all. I'm not blind to the strange nature, again it would have been far easier to not announce the company this way.

My relationship with Guy started with the equipment purchase and ended with the equipment purchase. It was purely transactional. I dealt with my attorney far more than I dealt with Guy. Good question, keep them coming!

 

[coolbreezy37]

Here’s a legit question, did you buy those blanks he had? I know he was sitting on a very large amount of blanks. That was pretty much all that he left with after he liquidated everything. I believe he was attempting to offload them.

 

[MicronKnives]

Here’s a legit question, did you buy those blanks he had? I know he was sitting on a very large amount of blanks. That was pretty much all that he left with after he liquidated everything. I believe he was attempting to offload them.

I did not, unfortunately. I also don't know where they landed. I do know that I had to constantly insist his stuff was removed from the building. It took quite a bit of effort to get him to rent a uhaul and load it up. Even his personal items were a pain to get him to take, like his bed. I ended up offering to give stuff away on marketplace in order to clear out that building. The landlord and neighbors were already fed up as you can imagine.

 

[RabidRat]

I did not, unfortunately. I also don't know where they landed. I do know that I had to constantly insist his stuff was removed from the building. It took quite a bit of effort to get him to rent a uhaul and load it up. Even his personal items were a pain to get him to take, like his bed. I ended up offering to give stuff away on marketplace in order to clear out that building. The landlord and neighbors were already fed up as you can imagine.

Hold up. Wait a minute. Something ain't right. You said in your other post on the S!K thread that you purchased his equipment. I quote "We made an offer and ended up purchasing the equipment. I then purchased a building to house all the equipment. ... and spent the last few months making that place habitable (It's in horrible condition, but cheap)". Now you are saying you took over his building and had a hard time getting him out. Something ain't adding up or I am missing something.