All About Pocket Knives

I just picked up this Queen #64 canoe, but when I got it home and looked more closely, several things seem "off" about it. Most glaring is the fact that the tang stamp is upside-down! Then there's the feel/action of the thing. My other #64s (I have four of them) are butter-smooth when opening and closing. This one almost requires a vice and a crane to open the large blade, and the small blade is even harder. Also, the handle material isn't quite as smooth; it doesn't feel quite as wonderful in the hand.

According to the Queen tang stamp guide, this tang stamp would be correct for a 1973-1975 time period. The underlining tail of the Q beneath the "ueen," however, is shown as slightly descending in the tang guide. On this knife, it appears to ascend sightly.

The "man in the canoe" etch is pretty faint, and is maybe "iffy" too.

Side-by-side with one of my other #64s, the pin locations look okay, but both bolsters on the new one are shorter. The large blade shape looks about right, but the small blade's tang is curved instead of squared, and the small blade is narrower. The small blade and its tang almost look like a cross between my Queen and Camillus canoes.

In the first comparison photo, the questionable one is on the right, the one with the darker scales.

What do you all think?

(The last photo is of my "good" #64.)

I know nothing about whether your knife is legit...but those certainly look like 2 different knives...there's a lot of differences.
I'm sure someone, with more knowledge will help out.

Doc B wrote:I know nothing about whether your knife is legit...but those certainly look like 2 different knives...there's a lot of differences.
I'm sure someone, with more knowledge will help out.

Thanks, Doc. It certainly is different from all my other #64s.

not positive-it looks ok to me-Delrin not popular with counterfeiters-whoever stamped it was high...

alabama wrote:not positive-it looks ok to me-Delrin not popular with counterfeiters-whoever stamped it was high...

Thanks!

I can't decide, either. Sometimes I look at it and think, "Well, someone just screwed up." Other times, "What the *** is this thing??" Like you said, it seems a strange thing for someone to counterfeit.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it might be a knife made during the closing months of Queen. Maybe made up of old stock and new parts.

bdev wrote:I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it might be a knife made during the closing months of Queen. Maybe made up of old stock and new parts.

Hmmm. Maybe so! It does seem to be a mish-mash of different parts.

Was there a period when the bolsters were that short? The bolsters on all my other ones are the longer style.

Daryl wrote:

bdev wrote:I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it might be a knife made during the closing months of Queen. Maybe made up of old stock and new parts.

Hmmm. Maybe so! It does seem to be a mish-mash of different parts.

Was there a period when the bolsters were that short? The bolsters on all my other ones are the longer style.

This image may help. It’s taken from page 3 of Queen catalog #50 (1972-1978). The canoe pattern is #64 at the bottom left hand corner. My apologies for the poor quality, low resolution photo.
Blow-up

Thanks, Greenman. That's the knife! Except fot the upside-down tang stamp? But, yeah!

Daryl wrote:Thanks, Greenman. That's the knife! Except fot the upside-down tang stamp? But, yeah!