Broken Backspring

uncouth

uncouth

Joined
Nov 26, 2009
Messages
387
In February my wife gave me a Queen Cutlery Country Cousin (sodbuster) for Valentine's Day, a great knife, I love it, However, yesterday the backspring broke. I wasn't even using the knife, it was in the pocket of my work pants resting on the floor. When I went to take the knife out of the pants to put into my other pocket I heard a clinking noise, and thinking maybe a coin was stuck in the knife I pulled it back out of my pocket and the blade was flopping open and closed because of the broken backspring. I found the broken piece in the pocket of the work pants. I've heard of backsprings breaking before, but usually under gross abuse, I've never heard of a knife breaking when just sitting in a pocket doing nothing.
Has any one else had problems with the backsprings on Queen knives?
I love the knife but I'm a little leery of buying a replacement when the first one broke the way it did. Suggestions, recommendations?
 
Have you contacted Queen Cutlery to see what their warranty coverage is? I am fairly sure they will either repair it or replace it at no charge if you send it in for them to look at. Probably a flaw in the actual spring with the Rc hardness of the spring bit too hard.

I'm sure that happens occasionally to all slip joint manufacturers since they do big batches when heat treating springs and blades. In theory they should all turn out the same. In practice not always.
 
That's pretty rare, but it does happen occasionally. Fortunately Queen's warranty should cover it. Bummer that it happened, though.
 
Give them a call. It's a lot faster and more effective. Or mail it in with a note (to their physical factory address, not the PO box). I've had to send in couple of knives before and I got an immediate response on the phone as opposed to e-mail. Their knives carry a lifetime warranty I believe so you should be fine. One thing to note is that if they choose to repair your knife instead of replacing, it might take a while. Queen seems to be a relatively small operation in that there is no warranty & repair dept. (as it was explained to me). Repairs are just circulated into the general production so turn around time can vary greatly depending on the time of year and overall workload.
 
Same problem, same knife. Backspring broke on normal opening after about a month of use. I shipped it back just before Memorial Day and haven't heard a word in over a month. Time to give them a call,

In the meantime, I'm carrying one of the nifty Boker Plus lockback sodbuster jrs. Aside from the puke green handle color, I like that one about as well as the Country Cousin. Steel is not quite as good, but that's offset by the lockback feature.
 
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