Queen #39 Dating

[stayinsharp]

I won a Queen #39 and want to know how to date it. I tried flowers and candy to no avail. She has a tang stamp with the crowned Q and the word "steel" next to it. no other stamps. It has delrin winter bottom scales and a thong hole in the small end bolster. Any help?

[0078]

Looks like a 49-58 very good looking knife.

http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/kni ... ps#p386846

This is a very good thread for dating knives.

[outofplace]

This page may help!

[nifbuf]

1958 - 1960.

[Keystone]

Dating knives is hard with Queen because they didn't throw stuff out- just used it sometime in the future. I agree the Q steel etch seems like 1950s, but they were not using much delrin at that time = that shows up in middle and later 1960s is my understanding.

So I am guessing this is a 1960s knife at the beginning of the delrin age, but before they had used up some older blades with earlier tang stamps.

So my additional question is "exactly" when did they start with the winterbottom delrin ?

Very nice recognizable knife. Saw one very similar yesterday at flea market, guy insisted on $95. I w3alked away.

[nifbuf]

I pasted a portion of an article about Winterbottom bone I wrote for Frank's Classic Knives and Knife World Magazine. Frank has the article posted here: http://franksclassicknives.com/about-ou ... -classics/. The transition from bone to Delrin was phased in over a number of years as the company used up the inventory of bone.


Queen Cutlery Company[/b]
Following the end of World War II, Queen City changed its name to Queen Cutlery Co. They registered the Big “Q” trademark in 1946 and in 1947 published their first catalog after the war. Queen Cutlery began using a new designed Winterbottom bone jigging on four of their hunting knife patterns that appeared in this catalog. They named this Winterbottom bone “Genuine Frontier bone stag” in the catalog. Queen transitioned from Rogers bone to Winterbottom bone over the next few years as their primary bone scale. By 1954, most bone handled knives, with the exception of most Barlow patterns, were produced in Winterbottom bone. Queen had been using Rogers bone from Rogers Mfg. Co. as a handle material since the 1920s, but must have decided to transition to Winterbottom bone after the war. They were the principle users of Winterbottom bone during this time from 1947 until the late 1960s. Fred Sampson, who was the materials manager at Queen during this time, told me that on many occasions Queen purchased that bone directly from Brazil and had it shipped to the Samuel Wintertbottom Sons Company for cutting, jigging and staining. Queen continued to use Winterbottom bone until the late 1960s.

In the early 1960s, the increased demand for bone dust from other industries forced the price of bone product higher which in turn caused an increased cost for Winterbottom bone handles and thus a cost impact on cutlery. In the late 1960s there were government restrictions on imported bone and embargos on foreign wood. Other cutlery manufactures were also transitioning from bone to synthetic materials for knife handles. These events made Winterbottom bone manufactured products so expensive that the company sold out to one of their customers in 1968. Queen Cutlery sought new material to replace the genuine bone handle material.

Sampson remembers that about this same time, Queen sent some of the Winterbottom bone handles to Rogers Mfg. Co. who made molds of these real bone scales and began producing synthetic handles now known by collectors as “imitation Winterbottom bone”. Bernard Levine, in a 1990 Knife World magazine article noted: “In the 1950s, cost-conscious cutlery manufacturers began to discontinue the production of bone handled pocketknives. Rogers Mfg. Co. changed with the changing times, and began to offer synthetic pocketknife handles. Mr. Bitel, who started with Rogers in 1955, was involved in the transition. He states that Rogers Mfg. Co. was the first firm to produce pocketknife scales made out of Delrin (a DuPont acetal resin).” Queen’s transition from genuine bone to Delrin marked the end of the use of genuine Winterbottom bone as a standard handle material in the late 1960s.

The distinctive jigging patterns and coloring of the original Winterbottom bone has maintained much of its character as it transitioned into Delrin; and “Winterbottom” became a generic name that is still used in the cutlery industry today.

[treefarmer]

Interesting article!
Let me add something that caught my eye. On the tang stamp chart that appears on the 1st page of the post labeled "Tang Stamp Charts", there is a note at the bottom that states "No tang stamp 1961-1971 etch only". That would allow this particular knife to have been made only in 1960 or some other decade altogether, maybe . The stamp on the #39, just as stated earlier, puts it in the 1958-1960 time frame, again maybe .
Treefarmer

[Keystone]

David,
Thanks for including the post on winterbottom bone and synthetic. The transition in the later 60s is more recent than I thought. I am thinking it is hard to date a Queen knife back in the 1950s if it is handled in delrin...?

Don't get me wrong, I think delrin is a very good handle material and I am glad to see Queen using it recently on the workhorse series knives.