QUEEN CUTLERY: Very Respectable

[JD Spydo]

Now I will say up front that I am a devout Spyderhead through and through. And I'm in no way jumping ship or touting anything else in the commercial knife world to diminish my admiration for the Great Spyder Factory and their line up of "excellent" products. But I am a guy who will give credit where credit is due. One of my fellow workers who gets knives once a month from people who confiscate them from KCI Airport passengers who break the rules here in Kansas City. And in the past 3 months he had brought me some respectable, quality blades in some of these batches. One brand I've particularly noticed that caught my eye has been "Queen Steel" cutlery items.

"Queen Steel" Cutlery out of the great state of Pennsylvania has been in business for a very long time. Even when I was a kid growing up I noticed them being sold in display cases in two of our old local hardware stores. But till now I never really gave them much attention even though I knew guys who carried them over the years.

One paring knife of theirs that I got from this latest batch is model B-0404 which has a cherry wood handle has proven to be a very nice kitchen knife. When I first looked at it I immediately thought it to be nothing more than what I jokingly refer to as "chewing gum stainless">> you know that really soft,springy, ultra-cheap stainless blade steel you see on most of the "Rip-Mart" cheapo blades :rolleyes: But much to my pleasant surprise this knife took a very wicked edge and held it while I used it for almost an hour. The blade steel truly had a decent heat treatment that I wasn't at all expecting. The knife was built solid as a rock and made of decent materials. So I'm just wanting to know how many of you have had experience and good luck with "Queen Steel" Cutlery? I also found one of their slender folders that I thought was fairly well made too in this recent batch and I'm going to be on the lookout for more of their stuff in the future.

[Pinetreebbs]

They are very nice traditional pocket knives. They made a limited run of doctor knives a couple of years ago. Flat end for crushing medicinal powders, a spatula blade for mixing and administering medicines and an long narrow knife blade for minor surgery and lancing jobs back in the day. I bought some examples for our family physicians.

[farnorthdan]

Only have one queen, EDC forum small GITD stockman, they had a real hard time with that one, the glow scale material had a ton of cracking issues. Not real sure how they made it past quality control, a lot had to be returned but queen made things right.

[JD Spydo]

I was doing some checking and noticed that "Queen Steel Cutlery" made some hunting knives with D-2 tool steel? As good as this paring knife is of theirs I'm willing to bet that would be a good hunting knife. Have any of you all had any experience with their hunting knives? Because the more I look at some of their folders and other blades they aren't bad at all. It seems like they are sort of a secret hidden out in plain view.

[bh49]

I really like their Mountain man with stag bone. I wish the knife was a little smaller.

[RanCoWeAla]

Canal Street that I believe was owned by Queen went out of business back in November which just shows how fast the cutlery business is going away. It's getting really hard to find quality knives anymore

[yablanowitz]

Queen was started by former employees of Schatt & Morgan way back. It was purchased two or three years ago by one of the founders of Great Eastern Cutlery, and I've heard a lot of stories about spotty quality since then. Their vintage stuff is good, but it was made to use, so a lot of it is well used indeed. They have also done a lot of contract work since the beginning. I have quite a few pieces that I suspect were made by Queen despite not having their name on them.

"Queen Steel" was originally their marking for their 440C stainless steel blades back when stainless first came out. Most of the alloys being tried back then weren't working out well, but Queen Steel was the exception.

[El Gato]

It's getting really hard to find quality knives anymore

Not meaning to derail this topic in any way but please take a good look at Great Eastern Cutlery, http://www.greateasterncutlery.net.
Great Eastern is celebrating their 10th Anniversary this year as the maker of the finest traditional production pocketknives made in America today. Great Eastern is a runaway success story of a little company that took a chance and chose to manufacture traditional pocketknives of high quality at a time when so many factories were failing due to foreign made product. I have been a customer of GEC since the beginning and if you appreciate old time quality in a traditional pocketknife, Great Eastern deserves your attention.
Proof positive that quality pocketknives do still exist, at GEC. :)

[Donut]

I like Canal Street Cutlery, GEC, Queen. GEC and Queen make knives for Northwood.

First traditional I got was Canal Street because they made them in D2. That's a pretty nice knife.

I got a couple of GEC's and Northwood (produced by GEC). I noticed that Northwoods was having Queen make some of their traditionals in CPM 154.

I've been carrying a Queen made Northwood in CPM 154 for a few years now.


Derrick mentioned that they'll be making some traditionals in CPM S35V. I will probably pick one of those up to try versus CPM 154, but I've been pretty happy with CPM 154.

[JAfromMN]

This is a company I'll stand by.

Never seen one I didn't like.

I'd proudly carry one.

[RanCoWeAla]

I have several GEC Northfield knives and they are very nice. I just wish they would use Stainless blades and liners. I think that would help them sell even more knives. Replace the 1095 Carbon with 154 cm and the Brass liners with Stainless