Different steel on Queen Cutlery railsplitter?

S

samek

Joined
May 7, 2003
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I have Queen Cutlery Railsplitter knife for one year now. It seems the blades are made from different types of steel, pen blade and coping blade have after a year of use a dark patina, the big clip point blade behaves like stainless. Any information about this? (All blades are original from this knife. Big blade was nailbraker – it was removed and mended - that's why a new rivet).

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That's really odd. Do the two smaller blades respond any differently to sharpening? Does the Clip blade seem harder to sharpen than the other two?

If so, they may have accidentally slapped a couple of carbon blades on your knife. They do offer some Railsplitters with carbon blades. Could be that they got them mixed up when assembling your knife.
 
I have heard on some designs they only use the D2 on the main blade and then something different on the others but I've never seen an example of it. It would be obvious the difference when sharpening the D2 steel and the others if they are a carbon like 1095 as the D2 takes a bit longer to get sharp and will act differently.

Depending on when this was made, like shortly after the Daniels family bought Queen, they were trying to get rid of stock and they used up whatever spare parts they had and kind of made some franken knives. I'm curious if this is kind of what happened, a lot of carbon blades a few D2 main blades left when they bought the parts stock. Pure speculation on my part but I think it's possible.
 
I don't know the why behind it, but that has to be what is going on here. D2 and 1095.
 
The Main is clearly stamped PH-D2 which means Peters Heat Treating, the company both Queen and GEC use for heat treating their blades, and D2 which is what that blade steel is. As has been said, obviously the secondary blades are not D2 but most likely 1095, if they were 420HC they would not have that much patina.

Dave
 
I've got a Queen Railsplitter that is a safe queen (no pun intended) so now you've got me curious. I'm going to have to dig it out and check out the blades to see if mine are different materials as well.
 
rje58 said:
I've got a Queen Railsplitter that is a safe queen (no pun intended) so now you've got me curious. I'm going to have to dig it out and check out the blades to see if mine are different materials as well.
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Just curious but how do you plan to determine that without ruining its safe queen status?
 
Good point! I don't consider it a collectible or an investment, just part of my collection. But you're right, I'm not anxious to put a patina on any of the blades.

My first thought was just to examine them for markings, slight differences in color, etc. If anyone has any suggestions, I would welcome them. I guess my next step would be testing the sharpness of each blade cutting paper, then sharpening them to see if there are any discernible differences in how they sharpen.

Railsplitter said:
Just curious but how do you plan to determine that without ruining its safe queen status?
Click to expand...
 
rje58 said:
Good point! I don't consider it a collectible or an investment, just part of my collection. But you're right, I'm not anxious to put a patina on any of the blades.

My first thought was just to examine them for markings, slight differences in color, etc. If anyone has any suggestions, I would welcome them. I guess my next step would be testing the sharpness of each blade cutting paper, then sharpening them to see if there are any discernible differences in how they sharpen.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. After reading my post over again, I thought it might have sounded offensive. I probably could have worded it a better way and I was about to edit it when I read your reply. I'm glad you didn't take offense.

Anyway, I've got a 2014 Railsplitter in my pocket right now with D2 blades. There are no markings whatsoever on the secondary blades. Just the Clip blade and it has the markings that Dave described above. I'm pretty confident that all three blades on mine are D2 as they all respond the same to sharpening.
 
An easy way to check the blade steel on your secondary blades is to dip just the very tip/point into vinegar for 10 to 20 seconds, if they form an instant patina they are most likely 1095. By just dipping the tip you can shine it back up with a very soft scotch bright or with a little more effort use a simply polishing cloth.

Dave
 
knowtracks said:
An easy way to check the blade steel on your secondary blades is to dip just the very tip/point into vinegar for 10 to 20 seconds, if they form an instant patina they are most likely 1095. By just dipping the tip you can shine it back up with a very soft scotch bright or with a little more effort use a simply polishing cloth.

Dave
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Along similar lines, I've just used a Q-tip to dab a little white vinegar on a small area of the blade. If it's something like 1095 or CV, you'll see the spot go 'gray' pretty fast, in maybe ~5 minutes or much less. AND you might smell the reaction too, if you put your nose to it. Make sure the blade is clean, with no oils/waxes/etc, before doing this. D2 won't be fazed by such a minimal application of vinegar in that short time (I've tried it with my Queens).
 
Obsessed with Edges said:
Along similar lines, I've just used a Q-tip to dab a little white vinegar on a small area of the blade. If it's something like 1095 or CV, you'll see the spot go 'gray' pretty fast, in maybe ~5 minutes or much less. AND you might smell the reaction too, if you put your nose to it. Make sure the blade is clean, with no oils/waxes/etc, before doing this. D2 won't be fazed by such a minimal application of vinegar in that short time (I've tried it with my Queens).
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^^^^^^^ Even Better idea!!!! :thumbsup::thumbsup::cool::cool::cool:

Dave
 
Queen's D2 also often has an orange peel finish to it (hard to see, but there), while 1095 usually finishes very smooth.
 
Couple of years back, I heard people tell of a similar mix up with carbon/420 on some Queen knives. Looks a lot like parts bin re-arranging...makes little sense to mate D2 and carbon together? Plus the Master blade being so stiff that it had to be dismantled and a new pin put through the bolster suggests some less than efficient QC.

Was this a factory repair or home-fix?
 
Will Power said:
Couple of years back, I heard people tell of a similar mix up with carbon/420 on some Queen knives. Looks a lot like parts bin re-arranging...makes little sense to mate D2 and carbon together?
Click to expand...

I've only seen the 420HC on the S&M knives from queen, probably because they polish up nice and that seems to be more of the "looks" line.

From a practicality standpoint, I can see a reason for D2 main and carbon secondaries to save costs of manufacture without sacrificing too much performance. Main blades tend to be used the most and thus something hard wearing could be preferred, which D2 is. D2 is known to keep a crummy edge, relatively speaking, and hold it forever. Carbon steels tend to get very sharp but dull faster. In a multi-blade tool this could mean a long lasting, basic cutting blade as the main and some very sharp secondaries. I mostly see this being something of interest, at least in my mind, for whittling so like a whittler pattern would be interesting is such a setup.

Having said all of that, I agree that it's more likely a mistake but that is what I perceived to be the reasoning behind mixing steels in a multi-blade setup but it should be advertised as such if that were the case.
 
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