Queen Cutlery Company Closes

bucksforus said:
I can't help but think about Ken Daniels undermining Canal Street by offering their employees more money to come to Queen. If that had not happened Canal Street might still be in business.
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Don't know if this is true or not. But for average workers unless the move is paid for by Queen, significant movement from Canal Street was not likely to happen. They aren't exactly next door to each other. Could they entice one or a few of the main cutlers, sure. That is business and happens all the time.

Unfortunately, Canal Street Cutlery was pretty much doomed. I believe one of their last knives was the one for the BF traditional forum.

The Daniels have always been very nice to me at shows when I would run into them. There was never any pressure to purchase one of their knives. One of the last Queens I purchased was at Blade at the Queen booth from Ken Daniels. Nice knife actually and well made.
 
22-rimfire said:
The Daniels have always been very nice to me at shows when I would run into them. There was never any pressure to purchase one of their knives. One of the last Queens I purchased was at Blade at the Queen booth from Ken Daniels. Nice knife actually and well made.
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They always have treated me like an old friend when I see them at shows. Last year at the Blade show, Ken offered to let my daughter come behind the table and help him sell knives to customers. He gave her a kiddo knife, and a can of pop, and let her sit in his chair. He and Ryan have always been friendly and fair with me every time I see them and buy something from them.
 
I think we can separate how the Daniels' treat people, live their lives and how they make knives. One, they are a class act and two they are a failure. Unfortunate but true.
 
22-rimfire said:
Don't know if this is true or not. But for average workers unless the move is paid for by Queen, significant movement from Canal Street was not likely to happen. They aren't exactly next door to each other. Could they entice one or a few of the main cutlers, sure. That is business and happens all the time.

Unfortunately, Canal Street Cutlery was pretty much doomed. I believe one of their last knives was the one for the BF traditional forum.

The Daniels have always been very nice to me at shows when I would run into them. There was never any pressure to purchase one of their knives. One of the last Queens I purchased was at Blade at the Queen booth from Ken Daniels. Nice knife actually and well made.
Click to expand...
I had to google that after reading your post, about a six hour drive one way, not likely that they would have enticed your average Joe to jump ship for a wage increase. And queen had what, maybe 25-30 workers total, that number really made me go , wow, they produced a lot of knives with a relatively small work force. That itself is a pretty amazing task.

All these posts so far, and what do we have? The only thing we know is that they are closed to restructure, and maybe will be back producing knives again. Seeing that they left the message on their site that the next event was the gun show this weekend, maybe they are still going to try and make a go of it. I get the feeling that one or two posters here may have inside information that they are keeping close to the cuff, and that's fine. Whatever is going on is really not any of the publics business to know, this I know a secret but I'm not gonna tell it schoolgirl stuff is for the playground anyways...

I was taking some time looking through the archived catalogs on the Queencutlery site, and there is an amazing amount of history in those catalogs. So I went to the way back machine, an internet archive site, and perused several of the captured crawls of the Queen site, the crawls had captured most of the stuff, but had stopped at the point of the actual catalog scans, so I spent an hour and a half, prompting the archives to crawl the catalog scans, they are all captured up till 1980, and after that they failed to fully load, but the early ones are all still there for anyone in the future to look at.

Let's hope we can see some more sharp shiny steel make its way back out of the Queen factory in the future...
 
sitflyer said:
I had to google that after reading your post, about a six hour drive one way, not likely that they would have enticed your average Joe to jump ship for a wage increase. And queen had what, maybe 25-30 workers total, that number really made me go , wow, they produced a lot of knives with a relatively small work force. That itself is a pretty amazing task.

All these posts so far, and what do we have? The only thing we know is that they are closed to restructure, and maybe will be back producing knives again. Seeing that they left the message on their site that the next event was the gun show this weekend, maybe they are still going to try and make a go of it. I get the feeling that one or two posters here may have inside information that they are keeping close to the cuff, and that's fine. Whatever is going on is really not any of the publics business to know, this I know a secret but I'm not gonna tell it schoolgirl stuff is for the playground anyways...

I was taking some time looking through the archived catalogs on the Queencutlery site, and there is an amazing amount of history in those catalogs. So I went to the way back machine, an internet archive site, and perused several of the captured crawls of the Queen site, the crawls had captured most of the stuff, but had stopped at the point of the actual catalog scans, so I spent an hour and a half, prompting the archives to crawl the catalog scans, they are all captured up till 1980, and after that they failed to fully load, but the early ones are all still there for anyone in the future to look at.

Let's hope we can see some more sharp shiny steel make its way back out of the Queen factory in the future...
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Wow gonna have to take a look at this
 
sitflyer said:
....All these posts so far, and what do we have? The only thing we know is that they are closed to restructure, and maybe will be back producing knives again. Seeing that they left the message on their site that the next event was the gun show this weekend, maybe they are still going to try and make a go of it. I get the feeling that one or two posters here may have inside information that they are keeping close to the cuff, and that's fine. Whatever is going on is really not any of the publics business to know, this I know a secret but I'm not gonna tell it schoolgirl stuff is for the playground anyways...
Click to expand...
I quit reading all the comments as your post pretty much summed up my view at this moment in time until something changes. Queen can make a good knife it they want to.
 
I wonder if anyone made it to the gun show, and actually knows if they were able to attend?
Thanks, Neal
 
Dumb question:

I have a couple newer Queen knives. All have the Q-dfc tang stamp. What does the DFC mean?
Thanks in advance.
Rich
 
bucksforus said:
I can't help but think about Ken Daniels undermining Canal Street by offering their employees more money to come to Queen. If that had not happened Canal Street might still be in business.
Click to expand...

Not sure where that came from but I'm certain it's not true. There were only about twelve of us on average working at Canal Street and we were all there till the end. We had a couple of fantastic people pass away at almost the same time and more than anything I think that's what knocked the wind out of the boss's sails, and understandably so.

Eric
 
Just saw this posted on Knife News. This is bad news.

Queen Cutlery is closing the doors to its Titusville, PA facility after more than 90 years in the business.


The announcement came through the company’s official Facebook page and cited monetary issues as the reason for the closure:

Kenneth Daniels CEO and President of Queen Cutlery has announced effective January 10, 2018, that due to issues with cash flow, Queen Cutlery Company has been forced to cease all production and close its Titusville Pennsylvania facility, and furlough its employees while it goes through a period of reorganization.

It is unclear whether or not the closing will be a permanent one. But either way, it marks the end of 507 Chestnut Street’s run as the longest continually operating knife factory in the United States. Schatt & Morgan first opened the plant in 1902. It was then purchased by Queen in 1933. In the early seventies, Queen itself was bought by the Servotronics corporation and subsequently acquired by Kenneth Daniels in 2012.

In recent years Queen has produced knives under its own label, as well as Tuna Valley Cutlery and Schatt & Morgan, and for Northwoods Knives. One of their most recent projects was a series of old-style automatic knives, which they kicked off with the John Henry model last year under the Schatt & Morgan label. Like other traditional slipjoint manufactures, Queen knives enjoyed an avid fan base. Ryan Daniels told us last year that about 80% of their business came from dedicated collectors.



Queen isn’t the first traditional knife maker to face hard times in recent years. Canal Street Cutlery closed its doors in 2015. Competition in the traditional knife market is fierce as leading knife companies tap into the traditional market with popular designs like the Benchmade Proper and the Spyderco Roadie. Even Cold Steel joined the fray with knives like the Lucky One.
 
Got the news from another source, Queen Cutlery just closed its doors after 100 years.
 
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