Queen Cutlery recently decided to do a special release for their Schatt & Morgan "upscale" line of slip joint knives. This particular release is dubbed "The Heritage Series".

Roughly a month ago, I bought one of these Heritage Series knives; the Clip Point blade with Rosewood handle scales. I've already posted a photo of that knife. In simple terms, the quality on this particular knife is equal to the very best that I've seen from other production knife companies. Indeed, the quality and attention to detail was truly astounding. So much so that I ordered another Heritage Rosewood model...with the Spear Point blade.

The latest acquisition is shown in this photo. Like is the case with it's earlier sibling, this knife features outstanding workmanship on the Rosewood handle scales. They are sanded and shaped perfectly with the pins and shield being perfectly flush with the steel liners. The bolsters are nicely polished as well. However, after that...things take a decided turn for the worse.

* The joinery between the Rosewood handle scales, the steel liners and the blade's tang is sloppy. A significant gap exists between one of the liners, the steel back spring/spacer and the blade tang. Fortunately, the knife's half-stop function works just fine (in spite of the gaps that exist).

* The blade isn't centered in the channel and leans to one side. This, I'm sure, relates to the liner gaps mentioned in the bullet point above.

* The blade itself has a very poor finishing job. Whereas the Clip Point version had a beautiful finish with no scratches and the grind lines (vertical) were polished out...this Spear Point edition has pronounced grind lines and a BUNCH of scratches. What you are seeing in the photo is AFTER I applied some Flitz and a little elbow grease. I'm not done and will probably use my Dremel and it's polishing kit to finish the work that Queen should have done.

* The blade was duller than a slice of cheese. I'll use my Spyderco Sharpmaker to fix that problem.

So, some of you may ask, "Why don't you just return it to Queen and make them fix it or replace it?" That's a fair question. Candidly, while I've never returned in knife to Queen, my experience with other manufacturers left a lot to be desired. As unhappy as I am, the knife is NOT "a piece of crap" and is actually better than most of what I've seen coming out of Case for the past decade. Candidly, the blade polishing and sharpening I can get done with less hassle than packaging the blade up, going to the post office, paying for postage and sending it back to Queen in the hopes that they'll really take care of it.

The work that I'll put into polishing and sharpening the blade is the kind of thing that I find rather "cathartic"...so while I shouldn't have to do this, it's not that big a deal. My REAL dissatisfaction with this rest in how far apart the level of quality is between the Clip Point and the Spear Point models. As for the gap, well, I actually have the same amount of gap on my GEC Tidioute Cobblestone Cuban and it's tolerable.