Although Microtech occasionally produces kitchen knives and sporting knives, their recent product line offers only tactical knives, and even the one fixed blade won’t pass for civilian uses. That’s a sad thing for us civilians, because Microtech’s attention to detail puts custom knife quality into production pieces. Building knives to a tolerance of 1/1000th inch even earns the respect of famous knifemakers like Greg Lightfoot. Lightfoot appraised Microtech knives as having quality equal to a handmade custom blade.
Anthony Marfione founded Microtech Knives, Inc., in 1994 in Vero Beach, Florida. Marfione intended to build precision knives, providing his customers the best quality money could buy. Extremely close tolerances, high quality tool steel, and completely American-made components were standard procedure from the beginning. Microtech now makes 95 percent of the parts used in its knives on-site. One of the older Microtech fixed blades called the Currahee became a favorite of military special forces teams, but Microtech’s specialty became double-action automatic knives which deploy and return blades at the push of a button. Business expansions caused a move to Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 2005, and in 2011 a move to an even larger new facility in North Carolina was underway.
Microtech currently markets knives intended only for professional military, law enforcement personnel and emergency medical technicians. Microtech builds both single and double action automatics in side opening styles and Out The Front models. Microtech currently offers only one fixed blade knife, the Crosshair, and this knife’s double-edged dagger blade with dual serrations definitely removes it from the sporting knife category. In fact, Microtech’s automatic knives like the OSS, Kestrel, and HALO leave little to the imagination and would even be out of place in the average EMT’s toolkit. You’ll want something safer if you’re cutting someone out of a seat belt.
