Working from the same Titusville, Pennsylvania, factory that housed their predecessor, Schatt and Morgan Cutlery, Queen still uses many of the old manufacturing processes and holds firmly to the old standards of craftsmanship. Their extensive product line includes many varieties of the American classic pocketknife, with handle slabs of rare woods from both native and foreign sources.
This sturdy pocket trapper knife, 4 !/8″ closed, houses two practical woodsman’s D2 tool steel blades just under 3 1/2″ long. These are the traditional trapper’s pair of spear point and spey, for piercing and for cutting as well as endless other applications. The uniqueness of this knife lies in the birds’ eye maple handle slabs. One of the hardest and rarest of American hardwoods, the best of this whorled and tight grained wood is cut from benign burl growths on sugar maple and shows a beautiful color and pattern prized by furniture makers for veneer.
The beauty of that wood was of equal interest to traditional knife makers who sought it out for other reasons. Few woods are so durable as birds’ eye, and a knife that survives years of hard use will only develop a better and even more practical gripping texture as the wood wears and ages.
Many of Queen Cutlery’s older production pieces are now collector’s items, and for good reason.
