Handmade Karambit Balisong Butterfly Knife | High Polished Blade | Skeletonised Full Steel Handle with Leather Sheath BF-170

The BF-170 is a karambit balisong with no handle material at all. The handles are the frame, drilled through, polished, with a finger ring at the butt. $215, and it is the cheapest knife in this group for a reason worth understanding.

Why a bare steel handle costs less

Because it skips a whole stage of work. Fitting panels means sourcing matched material, shaping it, drilling it, pinning it and finishing it flush with the frame, and doing it twice per knife with a material that varies from piece to piece. Remove the panels and that work disappears.

What does not disappear is the frame itself, which on this knife is doing more than usual because it is the visible surface. It gets finished properly rather than left as a rough interior part.

The drilling is not decoration

A solid steel handle on a folding knife is heavy in the wrong place. Both handles swing around a pivot at the blade end, so mass out at the butt makes the knife feel sluggish and end heavy, and on a karambit the ring already puts weight there.

The holes remove metal from precisely the places that do nothing structural. The result balances closer to the pivot, which is where you want it. If you have handled a cheap all steel folder that felt like a hammer, this is the difference.

What you gain by having no natural material

Nothing to maintain. Horn dislikes dry heat, bone dislikes soaking, wood wants an occasional oil. Steel wants a wipe.

It also means nothing to crack, nothing to shrink away from the pins after five winters, and nothing that will look different from the photograph because a buffalo grew it slightly differently.

What you give up

Warmth, mostly. Steel takes the temperature of the room, so on a cold morning this knife is cold in a way a horn handle never is. It is also more slippery than rose wood with wet hands, which the ring compensates for rather than solves.

And it is anonymous. That is a real cost. A stag handle tells you something about the animal it came from; a polished frame tells you about the machinist. Some people want the second thing, which is entirely fair.

High polish on a working frame

The blade and the frame are both taken to a mirror. It will scratch, and on a knife with this many edges and holes it will scratch sooner than on a flat one. Consider the first scratch a formality and get on with using it.

Specifications for this steel handled karambit balisong

Ordering the BF-170

Sharpened, tuned and checked by hand, with a fitted leather sheath and a gift box.

Or take it as a trainer instead. Identical frame, identical weight, no cutting edge, and the price does not move. Of everything in this group, this is the one most people should learn on first.

Laser engraving is $29, chosen on this page. Free shipping inside the United States, flat $49 worldwide.