U.S. made Slip Joints?

Q

Quy4n8

Joined
Nov 27, 2002
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659
What companies are left that actually produce slipjoints in the U.S.? I know Case makes their own and Queen, who else. Does Great Eastern make their own or are they brand labeled? What about Northwoods or Rough Rider?

While we are at it, whose are top quality? I have a G.E.C. large trapper, which I think is quite good, but could be improved, the springs are stiffer than necessary, the scales have shrunk slightly and initial sharpening left quite a bit to be desired. Case XX seems to vary from knife to knife. I don’t have any experience with Queen, however. What about the knives that Queen makes under the Schatt & Morgan label, and for Northwoods? Thanks.
 
Buck 301, 303, 305, and 309 are all still made in the US. Also, there are rumors that the rest of the Buck line will be brought back to the US so watch for that. I think the quality on the Bucks is very good.

Also, Amherst Cutlery comes to mind for US made slippies. They have a very nice production line plus a custom line. I haven't seen mine yet but they post here and people seem very happy with them thus far.
 
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GEC makes their own; a fledgling company across town from Queen. Good knives.

Queen's line of D-2 knives make excellent users, once you learn how to sharpen D-2!
Their Schatt&Morgan line are nicely made in standard cutlery steel, and they also have a line (File & Wire?) in ATS-34.

A lot of Northwoods are made at Queen or Ontario, and handled at Northwoods.

Canal Street owned and operated by ex-Schrade employees, makes beautiful knives.
 
I think we should mention "Bear & Son Cutlery, Inc.". They also make knives for Remington. Athough not the best in terms of quality they are still here.

2007 Remington
IMG_0573.jpg
 
Quy4n8 said:
While we are at it, whose are top quality? I have a G.E.C. large trapper, which I think is quite good, but could be improved, the springs are stiffer than necessary, the scales have shrunk slightly and initial sharpening left quite a bit to be desired. Case XX seems to vary from knife to knife. I don’t have any experience with Queen, however. What about the knives that Queen makes under the Schatt & Morgan label, and for Northwoods? Thanks.
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All of the ones you mentioned are considered "top quality" in production slipjoints. The issue is that most manufacturers these days do not enforce stringent enough quality control standards, and ship knives that should never have made it out the door. Further, since many of us have to mail order our knives we don't get a chance to hand select them, and in many cases the dealers don't have a huge selection for a particular model in the first place.

Good luck,

-- Sam
 
Sam makes a valuable point about us having to take risks through mail order purchase,some QC leaves a lot to be desired.

RR is a Chinese knife maker but not bad for low price starters.

Moore-Maker could be added but I believe it's a Queen Cutlery offshoot in actuality.

Northwoods is the maker of our forum knife this year so it will be interesting to see how they turn out.
 
I'm suprised to hear that about your GEC Pioneer. The scales shrunk? What handle material is it? That knife can't be more than two years old- it's a bit soon for the scales to be shrinking. I wonder if you might have gotten a dud- you hear complaints about the tough backsprings all the time, but I've never heard anyone mention problems with sharpness or scale shrinkage. Would you mind posting pics?

As for American made knives, I think they've been pretty well covered in the posts above. Canal Street is another company that does a good job- I think they make the Rigid knives. Queen makes Schatt & Morgan, Northwoods, Scagel, Moore Maker and many others (Colonel Coon?)- they deserve to be near the top of any short list. GEC makes the very best knives on the market in my opinion- I'm a blatant cheerleader for them. Case does a decent job, but their quality varies widely. Bear & Sons is at the bottom of the list of American makers, for me. It seems they're trying to improve, but they need to, because frankly, the Chinese are making better knives than they do.
 
Moonwilson, the scales are buffalo horn. The have very nice grain? or look to them, but they are slighly smaller than the brass, similar to what older stag can do. I will try to post photos, but my skills at macro photography are very poor. And yes the edges from the factory on mine were not good, but that doesn't worry me too much as I can sharpen them.

I agree with several posters that having to buy by mail order leaves you open to less than ideal circumstances, but we don't have much choice. The only slipjoints I see regularly are Case XX, and then the choices are pretty slim.
 
The more expensive bone and stag handled Moore Makers are made by Queen. The two that I have are very well made.

The cheaper bone handled Moore Makers are made by Bear.

The cheaper delrin and buffalo horn Moore Makers used to be made by Camillus before they went under.
 
The Moore Maker 3103, synthetic yellow handled sodbuster is also Queen made. (I got this directly from one of the Moore's during a telephone conversation a few months back.)
 
Queen (under several names, Moore Maker, Northwoods are some)
Case
Bear & Sons (under a few names as well some Moore Maker and some Remington)
Buck (yes, they still make some in the USA)
Great Eastern Cutlery
Canal Street Cutlery
 
As mentioned a while back, it appears that Colonial is still making at least some models in the USA.
 
Bear Claw Chris Lappe said:
Queen (under several names, Moore Maker, Northwoods are some)
Case
Bear & Sons (under a few names as well some Moore Maker and some Remington)
Buck (yes, they still make some in the USA)
Great Eastern Cutlery
Canal Street Cutlery
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That really is not many is it? Have you seen pictures of the Canal Street factory, it is just a old building with two rooms. I guess I don't understand global economics. It sure sucks as far as I am concerned.

There are a lot of individual or small builders all over the country, so I guess that is a good thing. I like going to the knife show in Atlanta, mainly to see all the hand made knives.
 
peter78 said:
That really is not many is it? Have you seen pictures of the Canal Street factory, it is just a old building with two rooms. I guess I don't understand global economics. It sure sucks as far as I am concerned.
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It doesn't take a huge factory to crank out some knives. Knives are small, so far as manufacturing goes. Even the old Camillus factory wasn't all that big, I was surprised when I saw photos of it. But I guess it makes sense. When you think of a factory, you think of like a car or an airplane factory. They're huge. But a car is many thousand times bigger than a slipjoint- there are a lot of big parts that have to move around and be stored. The parts that are involved in making knives are very small, so they don't need big storage warehouses or long assembly lines, or the equipment you need to move parts around that are too heavy for people to lift, or hold, or get at. A knife assembly line can be just a series of workbenches with tooling on them.
Also, the knife industry just isn't that big. The few factories we have now in the United States are enough to satisfy current market demand. If we could somehow bring back all of the manufacturing that went to China, then we could reopen factories the size of the old Schrade and Camillus shops, but probably not much more. There just isn't a big enough market to support large facilities and workforces, unfortunately.
 
Quy4n8 said:
the scales have shrunk slightly
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Sorry to hijack the thread, but unfortunately buffalo horn is known shrink and expand quite a bit more than other common handle materials, depending on humidity. Do a search to see if you can do anything to counteract this, like soaking in mineral oil (works w/ bone and stag).
 
Per the owner, Northwoods knives are not "made" by Queen. The owner is very closed lipped about how and where each knife is made. What he has said in more than one place (e.g. Knifeworld and forums) is that each knife can be different as to who assembles and who manufacturers the parts. For some knives, some parts come from Queen but they are assembled at Northwoods. For other knives, he has said that the knife is partially assembled by Queen and handled/finished at Northwoods. Some knives are fully produced in Michigan by Northwoods. That being said, some Northwoods look exactly like the Queens (e.g. toothpicks) except for the premium handle material (e.g. ebony, stag, etc.)

Not all of these companies have the same level of quality. For example, Queen has at least four levels of quality encompassed in their various product lines at various times (e.g. delrin line, bonestag/maple line, Schatt and Morgan, Schatt and Morgan File and Wire, President's Choice.) Case also has different levels of quality in their product line (e.g. yellow handle, premium handles, Bose copies, etc.) These levels of quality are not just in materials, but also in fit and finish. For example, the fit and finish of the Bose line for Case is not comparable to their yellow handle bottom line and the same can be said for Queen when comparing the Delrin line to File and Wire.
 
I've not noticed any of my CASE yellow handle knives being of poorer finish than their bone counterparts,they just cost less.Maybe I've just been lucky? Have noticed that the brown delrin handled Slimline Trapper has a thicker blade which is unpolished unlike the yellow handle or bone versions though.
 
I don't think the yellow handled CV Case knives have any better or worse finish than any of the other Cases. Actually, if anything, they seem a little better finished than some of the others. My yellow CV sodbuster is actually nicer than the black handled, stainless version. The CV model has mirror polished blade, and doesn't have the annoying blade etch. I always thought they were less expensive because CV steel costs less than stainless. I think their brown jigged delrin series is their bottom line, those do seem to be less finished than other Cases.

Quality in Case's bone handled models varies widely. I have several that are very well finished, and some that are less so. None that are really bad, but some are just put together and finished better than others. When I buy Case knives retail, I always ask to see several of the same knife in stock, if they have more than one, and I pick the one with the best action and finish. Individual knives, from the same series, from the same year can be very different in terms of blade snap, edge grinds, bone to bolster fit etc.
I'm sure that's due to Case knives being hand-made- it depends on the individuals working on them, if they're having a good day, or distracted, or hung over. Other companies make their knives by hand, too, but I don't notice variation in individual knives as much as I do with Case. Not that there is anything wrong with Case. I have a pretty good collection going, and I like them all.
 
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OTOH, Case's "Working Knives" series are sometimes a little less nicely finished than their higher dollar knives. I've got a brown Delrin handled Slimline Trapper and Electrician's Knife from this series, and they're both a little rougher around the edges than my other Cases. The Trapper in particular has sharp corners on the blade spine, and the blades on neither are as highly polished as a nicer Case.

-- Sam
 
I have found no difference in the quality of Queens in either delrin, wood or bone.

I have knives in both jigged black cherry, and forest edge 'winterbottom' delrin knives and the F&F is equal to any other bone or wood bolstered knife
 
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