Filipino Traditional Series D2 Steel Beautiful Tanto Blade Butterfly Balisong Knife USA Made With Stag Horn Handle BF-116

Stag horn never repeats itself, so no two BF-116 handles come out the same. The tanto point is the constant and the grip is one of a kind. D2 tool steel, brass and stag horn, 24cm open, 12cm blade, 200g. It is the least expensive knife in our Filipino Traditional line and the one we can show you the fewest accurate photographs of.

The photograph is not your knife

We need to be straightforward about this because it causes more emails than anything else we sell.

The listing image shows one BF-116. Yours will have different figure, different colouring, different ridge patterns and probably a slightly different feel in the hand. Stag horn is antler, and antler is grown by an animal rather than extruded by a machine, so the variation is not a tolerance we are failing to hold. It is the material.

Some pieces come out pale and smooth. Some come out heavily textured with deep grooves. Some have a darker crown section that people either love or find odd. We sort blanks for quality, not for uniformity, because sorting for uniformity would mean throwing away most of the horn.

Horn is the original material

This is not a modern upgrade, it is a return to the start. The oldest name for this knife is baling sungay, folding horn, and it is called that because the handles were carabao horn. The pattern came out of Taal in Batangas, and horn is what was to hand.

Wood came later and became the default because it is easier to work, easier to match and easier to buy in quantity. Nothing wrong with that, and most of our traditional line is rose wood for exactly those reasons. But if you want the handle material the name refers to, this is the side of the range to be looking at.

Specification for this stag horn balisong

Note the 200g. Most of our 24cm traditional knives run 220g, so this is the lighter one in the pattern by a noticeable margin. Twenty grams does not sound like much written down. In your hand, over a twenty minute session, it is the difference between finishing comfortably and putting the knife down.

The tanto point on a butterfly knife, in one paragraph

Two straight sections meeting at an angled tip instead of a curve running to a point, which puts a lot more steel immediately behind the tip and makes it very hard to break. It also makes sharpening easier, because you are working two flat sections rather than following a curve. If that is the part you care about most, the BF-98 is the same point in rose wood and we go into the geometry properly on that page.

Living with an irregular stag horn balisong handle

• It will not sit in a moulded case. Foam cut for a smooth handled knife will not accept this one. Use the fitted leather sheath it comes with.
• Grip is genuinely better when damp. The natural ridges do what texturing on a modern handle is trying to imitate.
• It yellows over the years. Horn mellows toward cream and amber. This is normal and most people prefer the aged look.
• Keep it out of sustained dry heat. Horn can crack in the same conditions that crack wood, and a car dashboard in summer is the classic way to find out.
• Do not soak it. Same advice as the wood handles, same reason: the pivot, not the material.

The knife care guide covers the pivots, which is where attention is actually needed.

Why this is the cheapest one in the line

Because horn blanks are less predictable than wood, and pricing follows what a batch costs to get through the bench rather than what a material sounds like it should be worth. Stag horn reads as the premium option and here it is the value one. We are not going to reorder the numbers so they look more logical. What the lower price does not touch is the blade. Same D2, same 58-60 HRC, same grinder, same person, as the knife at the top of the range.

Sharp or blunt, same money

The trainer option is above Add to Cart. Same knife, bevels left unsharpened, same 200g and the same balance, so the timing you learn transfers exactly. The trainer guide explains the pricing. It ships in a fitted leather sheath, free within the US and at a flat $49 to the rest of the world.