Antelope 440c Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-06

The BF-06 Antelope is 250g on a 24cm frame, which makes it the densest knife we build. A 12cm 440C blade, brass bolsters with Philippine deer horn. It is the standard size and it weighs what a 29cm knife normally weighs.

Weight and length are two different questions

People treat heavy and long as the same thing because on most knives they arrive together. They are not the same thing at all, and this knife is the clearest demonstration we can offer.

Length sets how far the handle travels through a rotation. Weight sets how hard it is to start and stop. A 29cm knife at 250g is slow because the arc is long. This knife is 24cm, so the arc is normal, and the 250g means every rotation has serious momentum behind it in a frame that still fits your hand the way you expect.

The result is a knife that starts deliberately and then goes exactly where it was pointed. It is, for a certain kind of flipper, the best feeling in the range.

How it compares inside our 24cm knives

Coming from a 175g knife this will feel wrong for about three days and then it will feel like the others were underfed. Coming from our 300g knives it will feel positively agile.

Where the weight went

Brass bolsters, solid, on a standard frame. There is no clever engineering here and there is no ballast hidden in the handles. Brass is dense, we did not hollow it out, and the knife weighs what that decision weighs.

It also means the mass sits along the whole handle rather than at one end, which is why it balances so cleanly at the pivot despite being heavy. A knife with the weight bunched at the butt behaves very differently and much worse.

440C, and why it is the right steel on this butterfly knife

440C is an American high-carbon stainless, around one percent carbon and seventeen percent chromium. The chromium keeps it from rusting, the carbon lets it harden properly, and the C is what separates it from the 440A that appears in cheap knives under the name “440 stainless”.

Ours run at 58-60 HRC. It sharpens on any decent stone without a fight, keeps a working edge for a long time, and does not care about weather. On a knife that will spend its life being flipped rather than cutting, a steel that stays sharp with no attention is more useful than one that reaches a marginally finer apex.

Deer horn, and what to expect from a horn balisong handle

Philippine deer horn, cream through smoky brown with darker streaking. Every piece is different because it grew rather than being manufactured, so yours will not match the photograph and the two handles may not perfectly match each other.

• Out of prolonged direct sun. Horn dries and fades.
• Do not store the knife wet. The 440C is indifferent. The horn is not.
• No oiling required, though a light wipe once a year keeps the colour deep.
• Uneven colour is horn. A crack or a loose insert is our problem and we will fix it.

The name

Antelopes are fast and light, and this is the heaviest 24cm knife in the range. The animal series was assigned rather than designed. We are not going to pretend there was a metaphor.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this 440C balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, chosen above Add to Cart. Same 250g, same balance, no edge. The price is identical because grinding an edge is one operation in a long build, and on a knife with this much momentum the blunt version is the sensible way to learn it.

A fitted leather sheath is in the box, cut for the 24cm frame. US shipping is free, flat $49 to anywhere else for the whole order.