Honeypot Ant 440c Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-05

The BF-05 Honeypot Ant is a 300g balisong on a 29cm traditional frame, 440C blade, brass with Philippine deer horn. It is the second heaviest knife we make and it is twenty dollars cheaper than the heaviest, which makes it the sensible one of the pair.

The two heavy knives, side by side

Ten grams apart, twenty dollars apart. You will not feel ten grams on a 300g knife. Nobody will. The price gap is handle work and how the horn blanks came out that month, and if the two are otherwise identical to you then this is the one to buy.

We are aware that this paragraph talks you out of our more expensive knife. It also stops you emailing us in three weeks asking what the difference was.

What 300 grams is actually like

Slow, certain, and physical. The knife rotates at a pace you can watch, which sounds like a disadvantage and is the opposite when you are learning, because you get real time to notice a mistake before it becomes a knuckle.

What it will not do is change direction quickly. Chained sequences that snap between rotations are much harder on a knife this heavy, and if that is your interest, our 150g knives are the right answer and cost less.

The other honest note is stamina. Half an hour with 300g in one hand is a workout. That is not a complaint, it is a planning consideration.

Why a heavy knife is a heritage knife

The 29cm frame is the traditional Batangas size, called veinte y nueve, and the old knives were not light. A balisong in Taal in 1910 was a working tool made from what was to hand: brass, horn, and enough steel to be worth carrying. The modern obsession with lightness came from the flipping community and the export market, both of which arrived considerably later.

This knife is closer to the original object than most of what is sold as traditional.

440C steel, and why it suits this balisong

440C is an American high-carbon stainless: roughly one percent carbon, seventeen percent chromium. The chromium is why it shrugs off damp and the carbon is why it takes a hardening, which is the difference between 440C and the 440A that turns up in cheap knives with the letter carefully omitted.

We heat treat to 58-60 HRC. It sharpens easily on an ordinary stone, holds a working edge for a long time, and needs no attention between sessions. On a knife that is already asking a lot of your forearm, a steel that asks nothing of your attention is the right pairing.

Deer horn balisong handle on brass

Philippine deer horn: cream through smoky brown, streaked, and different in every single knife. It warms in the hand faster than the brass does and takes a soft shine at the contact points over a year or two.

Keep it out of long direct sunlight, do not put the knife away wet, and it will need nothing else from you. Colour variation is horn. A crack or a loose insert is our problem and we will fix it.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this 440C butterfly knife

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, selected above Add to Cart. Same 300g, same balance, no edge. On a knife this heavy with a 14cm blade, buy the trainer first unless you already flip confidently.

A fitted leather sheath is in the box, cut for the 29cm frame. Free US shipping, flat $49 everywhere else for the entire order. Balisong law varies by country and by US state and is your own to check before ordering.