Bumblebee Handmade 440C Stainless Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Brass and Carabao Horn Handle | 24cm EDC Flipper Gift for Him | BF-18

The BF-18 Bumblebee is a 24cm balisong with a 12cm 440C blade, 175g, brass bolsters with carabao horn inserts. It is the horn twin of the BF-13 Bear, identical in every respect except the handle material and identical in price, which is the honest way round.

A knife that does not care what the weather is doing

440C carries around seventeen percent chromium, which is a great deal, and it is the reason this blade will sit in a damp coat pocket for a fortnight and come out looking the way it went in. Our high carbon knives would have spotted by day four.

The brass does not rust either. It oxidises to a brown patina, which is a stable surface rather than damage, and it does that whether you handle the knife or not. The horn is the only component with an opinion about moisture, and horn’s opinion is that it would rather be dry.

The short version: this is a low-maintenance knife with one component that wants a cloth occasionally. That is a far better deal than it sounds.

Carabao horn

Carabao is the Philippine water buffalo, and its horn is where the word balisong most likely comes from: baling sungay, folding horn. It is the original handle material, and it is harder and denser than deer horn, which is why it takes a genuine gloss rather than a soft sheen.

Black to charcoal, sometimes with amber banding where the horn ran thin. Every piece is different. Yours will not match the photograph and the two inserts may not perfectly match each other, because it grew rather than being cut from sheet stock. Uneven colour is horn. A crack or a loose insert is our problem and we will fix it.

The same knife in wood, for the same money

Buy the Bear if you want the knife to look like the photograph and grip a shade better with wet hands. Buy this one if you want the traditional material and an object nobody else has an exact copy of.

We priced them the same because they cost us the same. Charging more for horn to make it sound special would have been an easy twenty dollars and a slightly dishonest one.

What 440C at 58-60 HRC means on a butterfly knife

An American high-carbon stainless: about one percent carbon, seventeen percent chromium. The carbon is what allows a real hardening, which is the difference between 440C and the 440A that appears in cheap knives with the letter quietly dropped.

At 58-60 HRC it sharpens on any decent stone without a fight, holds a working edge through a long stretch of normal use, and does not need a diamond plate the way D2 does. For most owners that combination is more useful than a marginally finer edge they would have to work harder to restore.

The name

Amber banding in dark horn, and a knife that hums through a rollover if the pivots are set right. Bumblebee was close enough and we are content with it.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this 440C butterfly knife

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, chosen above Add to Cart. Same horn, same 175g, same balance, no edge.

A fitted leather sheath comes with it. Use it for carrying and not for storage, for the reason in the table above. US shipping is free, flat $49 anywhere else for the whole order.

Once the Bumblebee arrives, cleaning it properly matters more than people expect, and the right way to clean and oil a balisong covers how to oil the pivots and wipe down the horn without damaging either. It sits in the high carbon balisong range. The BF-17 Black Widow Spider shares the same brass and carabao horn handle on the same size frame.