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Queen small lockblade, 1 blade
Received this Queen small lockblade knife with curly zebra African hardwood handle today. Pictures below. I have played with it for about an hour. This review is based on first impression which can be drastically different than the impression we have after carrying any given knife for a while. You know that so forget I said it. :)
SPECS:
3" closed
Blade steel: PH-D2
Blade length: 2, 3/16" long (handle to tip)
Handle material: curly zebra African hardwood
Lock: backlock at the rear of the handle
I don't like to consider price but it needs to be mentioned I think. To expect the same level of perfection on a $55 knife as you might on a $200 knife is a little unrealistic I believe. So I keep that in mind when I form an opinion but I'll write my opinion as if price isn't considered as much as I can.
Scale: 1-10 (10=best)
First glance: 7
The fit & finish (F&F) is not great around the pivot pin/washer or other pins. The blade is not centered when closed. I don't really care about this as long as the blade doesn't touch the liners when opening or closing, scratching the blade. I only mention it for those who consider this to be real important. Some people are bugged by this. For me it's horizontal blade play that bugs me. I hate that. Other than this it's a nice looking knife.
First opening: 7
The opening is not smooth the first few times. Like absolutely no oil is applied at the factory. I DON'T care about that. I oiled it and it's much smoother now. This is something that I expect to change drastically in the next few days. When opening the blade there is a "corner" in the tang that I think is supposed to be a safety feature. That is what I consider it to be. On some knives there is a flat spot on the rear of the tang where the blade will stop at a 90° angle with the handle. At this point the spring is also flush with the liners on the handle. That's not the case with this knife. The rear of the tang is round so there's not a "stop" position. That's ok with me but I've seen enough people mention it that I guess it's important to some.
Open & locked: 7
There is a tiny bit of vertical blade play when the knife is open. This is caused by the part of the spring that fits into the slot in the tang is not formed perfectly. This may improve once the knife is broken in a bit. There is no horizontal play at all. The lock seems plenty secure. I put enough force on the blade spine to force the blade to close if there were a problem. F&F: The spring on the back of the handle fits too far into the tang slot. This causes the spring to not be flush with the liners at both ends of the handle. The spring is lower than the liners at the pivot end and higher than the liners at the rear of the handle. I think this is one of those issues where price is considered. TOTALLY unacceptable on a $200+ knife but on a $55 knife I'll not be too upset. I have pictures of this (if the issue is visible in them). Where the blade spine meets the lock spring the blade is significantly lower than the lock bar. It is so much lower that it would appear to be intentional, not just laziness on the designers when drawing the dimensions for the parts to be cut. If this is a "mistake" anywhere along the design/manufacturing process it's a HUGE mistake. I have never seen a knife with such a difference in the lineup of the blade spine and the back of the handle that I can remember. The last two pictures show this I think. I don't have a camera or the skill to get good close up pictures.
Ergonomics: 10
The knife fits great in my hand. It has a 3-finger long handle for hands my size and is VERY comfortable. I didn’t use the knife yet. But it feels comfortable with my thumb on the pivot/blade and with my index finger close to the tip as well. Great feel.
Closing the knife: 9
The knife closes fine. I can hold it with my middle finger in the finger choil, press the lock with my thumb and push the blade down with my index finger. Then I can close it the rest of the way with my other hand or by pressing the spine on my leg to finish closing it. This means one-hand closing is fine. I consider one-hand operation a very good feature of any folding knife. I can live without it but a knife that can be opened/closed with one hand gets a lot of points for my EDC consideration. Right now I can't open this knife with one hand but that may change as the pivot breaks in and gets smoother. If it doesn't that's ok. After all, it's not designed to be a one-hand opening knife.
SUMMARY
I like this knife and am happy with it. Not having used it yet I haven’t formed an opinion of the blade steel. I haven’t sharpened it. I have not owned PH-D2 (or any D2 for that matter) so I’ll learn what kind of edge I can get on the blade and how it holds the edge. For me this is a MAJOR aspect of any knife I plan on using and I do plan on using this knife. I do like the knife despite what seems to be quite a few negative comments I've made.
If I were to decide to buy another (more expensive) Queen pocket knife I think I would want to see it first. I have a few I would like to have and based on the pictures they look great. I will admit the different pictures of this knife did NOT suggest the F&F should be as pretty as the knives in the other pictures. I have considered the copperhead, gunstock, whittler (couple others). I would appreciate input from anyone willing on the F&F or appearance on other Queen pocket knives you have, especially this knife. The F&F on this knife does not justify a knife costing more than a $50 ballpark in my opinion. I was told by the reseller this particular knife was made at the factory in the past 2 weeks.
I think I have covered everything I think at this point. A lot of what I said is negative but some of that sounds worse than my personal opinion. Some of the negative things I mentioned were for people who may care more about different issues than I do. I would recommend this knife to anyone who is not picky about fit and finish. It’s a nice little EDC knife with basically a very nice appearance. In a display case with knives you may be very proud of it would look like the ugly duckling from a “beautiful knife display” perspective I believe.
Tags: Cutlery, D2, Lockback, Queen, african, blade, curly, hardwood, one, steel, More…
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack Haskins, Jr. on
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Steve, I am going to send it to the seller I bought it from or Queen directly. I've emailed both and will wait and see who replies and what they say.
Jack
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Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on
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You may hear from Ashley right here, she is our liason
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This was to be a review of the first Queen knife I bought. Not the description of a flawed knife that I'm sure is not the standard. Hopefully anyone reading this and considering this knife won't focus on the fact that the lock fails on this particular knife. If you like a small, attractive, inexpensive, locking EDC pocket knife this one is nice.
The only thing I didn't voice an opinion on is the blade steel. I won't be able to do that until the knife is replaced because sharpening it and too much use may void the warranty. I hope to continue this when I get the new one. I'm assuming it will be replaced. I'm sure the blade steel is fine so me writing about it probably isn't too important anyway. I'm probably the only one here who hasn't used Queen's D2 blade.
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One fit & finish issue I failed to mention is the finger nail nick is not cut properly IMO. In the pictures on the web pages and the picture in the Queen catalog I have the nail nick is cut properly. It is parallel with the spine at the location of the nick. I wanted to stay off the subject of the lock but in this case I'm wondering if the blade was out of position during the grinding portion of manufacturing. I know nothing about the process of cutting the blade but now there are two issues on this one knife that might indicate a misalignment on this one blade. The tang lock slot being cut "off-angle" would create the locking issue. Now the nail nick being "off-angle" and every picture I've seen of this knife indicate the lock being faulty is an issue with THIS ONE KNIFE and not the model nor a good example of Queen's quality standards. Every company making every or any product has a bad one slip by once in a while.
Ok, hopefully that's enough about the lock. Let's focus on the knife as if the lock is fine. It will be on the new one. :)
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Memory refresh. I was doing a review on this knife and found the lock didn't hold properly. Queen replaced it and I got it today. The knife is working properly now and I can continue the review with my opinion of the steel. Haven't done anything yet. Just wanted to say this knife came VERY sharp. Much sharper than the first one. The edge angle is a little high so I'll lower it after I see how the steel holds an edge with the factory edge. I'd also like to say the bevels are very consistant along the edge. I tried to put a new edge on a knife once using my Dremel with a 1" diameter grinding wheel. Of course this is a bit small buy what I noticed was how hard it is to control the edge along a grinding wheel and keep it as accurate as the sharpeners who sharpen production knives. Most of the time anyway. So thanks to the guy who sharpened this knife. :) Already drowned the pivot in Tuf-Glide for corrosion prevention. I do that with all non-stainless blades. Gonna go chop down a tree to test edge retention. :)
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Permalink Reply by Steve Hanner on
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Excellent Jack, I am glad they replaced the knife for you! Good folks those Queen people and I thank them too. Always good to hear of a company standing by their customer. So we all wait to hear your thoughts as they unfold!
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LOL, Hope it is a small tree
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I did some whittling with the knife and decided the edge needed reprofiling now. I used an Edge Pro sharpener and determined the inclusive edge angle was close to 50 degrees. I lowered it to 40 degrees for now and will probably go lower now that I have used it a bit. I sliced enough cardboard to be happy with the edge retention. The edge stayed sharp enough to use after quite a bit of cardboard. It is easy enough to sharpen as long as you have good quality stones in good condition. I re-profiled the edge in about 30 minutes. I used Shapton glass stones and they remove steel very fast. If I had used the water stones that came with the Edge Pro it would have taken longer I believe.
So I like this as a little user knife with decent edge holding ability and an adequate lock. The lock doesn't feel as secure as others but I believe it is fine as long as you don't need to wrestle grizzley bears. lol
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Jack
Well it is great that the final outcome was good! We learned a lot from this one. Queen will back up their products, the edge retention is good and Jack doesnt need to wrestle Grizzly's with his Queen LOL
So I like this as a little user knife with decent edge holding ability and an adequate lock. The lock doesn't feel as secure as others but I believe it is fine as long as you don't need to wrestle grizzley bears. lol
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Final (I think :)) comments on the Queen small lockblade (8445). I'm getting pretty picky now but since this is a review this is the place to be picky. Fit and finish on this knife is what I'd call about average. This is not an expensive knife so maybe the goal wasn't that high during manufacturing. If a knife is $100+ this fit & finish would be sub standard IMO. The handle material and liners are not flush with each other. You can feel the difference when sliding your finger across them. Doesn't look bad at all but for a "10" the pieces of a knife should be flush. As if they were finished and polished after already being assembled. These look more like they were made seperately and finished then assembled. That's a guess of course. The pins are not round in appearance. It looks like when they were pressed to swell the ends they didn't swell perfectly round. To be honest I wonder if they ever do. Especially on wooden handle knives where the wood may compress more or less in different areas. Something about pins I need to learn about is when they swell at each end and then are ground smooth, are they still larger under the surface than the diameter of the pin? I hope so or they wouldn't hold as well. The pivot pin head has a large washer underneath it. Personally I LOVE this. It should keep the pivot tightness more secure. But the pin heads do stick out from the surface of the handle and it's not the prettiest. I don't mind this at all.
This is my first review of any knife. Some of the things I mention may just be a normal characteristic of the type of knife. The pins for example. I don't know enough about making a knife to know if what I mentioned is normal or not "up to par" or whatever.
I think there is what I'd call a negative aspect of the lock. I look at the area on the blade tang where the lockbar seats in the tang when locked. I also look at another lockback knife I have. On the other one the top of the notch is a sharp turn and the one on this knife is more rounded. The rounded shape of the spot may allow the lock to release to easily depending on how far the lockbar sits down into the notch in the tang. This may have been part of the problem with my first knife. I think it is related but can't be absolutely sure. This knife is doing fine. I still think the notch should be "squared" more than "rounded". But I'm no knife expert. It just makes sense to me.
I think I'm done. I see this knive being in my pocket for a lot of time. For a smaller knife it is comfortable to hold and use. I like the appearance of the wood and the blade is made of good steel. Me happy. :)
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Brief update. I've had this knife in my pocket every day since I got it. In fact I didn't realize that until I pulled it out this afternoon to use it and it hit me. I have not had one complaint or dissatisfaction with it at all. My two primary interest points are the lock being reliable and the edge retention of the blade. The knife gets points for the lock not releasing and cutting a finger off. Also, the edge has only needed to be touched up once since I got it. Well, twice if you count today. I don't think I would have thought about doing it today if I also didn't think about the knife becoming a normal part of my EDC. It's not the only knife I carry but it does have a welcome place in my pocket.
It's a nice little pocket knife that holds an edge well and I like a folding knife that locks a lot more than slip joints. I like a lot of slip joint knives but one of them would never make the list of knives that I'd choose if I could only have one. I'm not too experienced in a wide range of traditional knife companies and models but of the ones I have owned and used PH-D2 surpasses the other steels in my opinion. This knife was a headache to finally get but it is worth the trouble. I almost cancelled the order then ask for my money back but I'm glad I didn't. One reason I did keep the knife is because of the confidence the people here have in Queen. I'm sure the folks at Queen appreciate the loyalty. After all it's their fault for making a decent knife. :)
Jack
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