Masked Palm High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-75

The BF-75 Masked Palm Civet is a 24cm high carbon balisong, 12cm blade, 180g, brass and kamagong. Most balisong pages talk about flipping and never mention cutting. This one is about using it as a knife, including the part where high carbon is awkward about it.

It is a good cutting knife, and here is why

The design has no spring, no liner lock, no detent and no ball bearing. Two handles fold around the blade and a tang pin stops it where it should stop. There is nothing in a balisong to wear out or fail under load, which is more than most folders can say.

The 12cm blade is long for everyday tasks, which helps with draw cuts and hurts in tight spaces. And a balisong opening is loud and looks like a performance whether you meant one or not, so think about the room before you open one to deal with a parcel.

The food question, honestly

You can cut food with this. People have used carbon steel in kitchens for centuries and Japanese kitchen knives are still made from it. But two things are true and both get skipped.

Acids react immediately. Cut an onion, a tomato, a lemon or anything else acidic and the blade will darken within minutes. That mark is patina, it is not dangerous and it is not damage, but it is instant and it is permanent enough that you should know before it happens rather than after.

The knife must be dried at once. Not after the washing up. Immediately. Food is wet, food is often salty, and salt water is the fastest route to orange pitting there is.

If you want a knife you can use on a picnic and then put in a bag without thinking, our 440C and VG10 knives are the correct answer and they cost about the same. We would rather say that than sell you a knife that disappoints you at the first tomato.

Why a carbon edge is better on wood

Because grain size decides how fine an apex you can hold. Stainless steels get corrosion resistance from chromium, chromium forms comparatively large carbides, and those carbides put a floor under how thin the edge can go before it crumbles at a microscopic level.

Plain carbon steel has none of that. Ground properly it goes finer than anything stainless we sell, and on a long slicing cut through wood fibre you can feel the difference in a way you cannot on cardboard. Woodworkers have been arguing this point for a century and they are not being sentimental about it.

The steel, and what high carbon does on a balisong

Iron, about one percent carbon, essentially no chromium, heat treated to 58-60 HRC. Fine grain, keenest edge we grind, comes back on an ordinary stone in minutes with no diamond plate involved.

Wipe the blade dry when you put it down. That is the maintenance requirement and it is eight seconds. Left wet it pits orange and that does not come out.

The frame and the kamagong handle

Twenty-four centimetres at 180g, brass bolsters with kamagong inserts. The weight that helps in a rollover also helps in a cut, since mass is doing work your hand would otherwise do. Kamagong is Philippine ebony, dense, close-grained, and it will not swell, crack or hold anything you would rather it did not.

Ordering this high carbon dagger balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, chosen above Add to Cart. Obviously it will not cut anything, which is the point if you are still learning.

A fitted leather sheath is in the box. Store the knife outside it. US shipping is free, flat $49 elsewhere for the whole order. Balisong law varies by country and by US state and it is on you to know yours before carrying one.