Dagger Snake Filipino Traditional D2 Steel Beautiful Blade Butterfly Balisong Knife USA Made Gift For Him With Stag Horn Handle BF-117

The BF-117 Dagger Snake is a 24cm Filipino Traditional balisong with a 12cm D2 blade, 220g, brass with stag horn. It is the cheapest knife in the Traditional line and it is the one people most often buy for somebody else, so this is the page about giving one.

Buying a knife as a gift, done properly

A knife is a good gift and a slightly risky one, and the risk is almost never the one people worry about.

• Buy the trainer. Unsharpened, same knife, chosen above the Add to Cart button. If the person you are buying for has never flipped a balisong, a live 12cm edge in their first month is the one genuinely bad outcome and it costs nothing to remove.
• Check their local law, not yours. Balisong rules differ by country and by US state and in a lot of places possession and carry are governed separately. A gift that cannot legally be received is an awkward parcel.
• Age matters. Restrictions apply in most jurisdictions and we comply with them.
• Do not expect it to look like the photograph. The handle here is stag horn, so it will not. More on that below, and it is worth telling them when you hand it over.

There is a superstition in several cultures that giving a knife cuts the friendship and that the recipient should hand back a coin. We have no view on whether it works. We do note that a fair number of our customers mention it, so if you want to include a small coin with it, you would not be the first.

Why this one gives well

Because it looks like considerably more money than it is, and that is entirely down to the stag horn. A natural, irregular, warm-coloured handle reads as a made object in a way a synthetic one does not, and it is the first thing anyone notices.

The dagger blade with the worked spine helps too. It is a knife that photographs as a gift rather than as a tool, which for once is the right way round.

Stag horn balisong handles, and what to tell them

Stag is shed antler. It varies in colour from pale cream to a deep brown, the ridging and pitting run differently on every piece, and it is impossible to match closely even across the two handles of one knife.

That variation is the point and it is also the thing people email us about, so say it when you hand it over: this knife is one of one, and it cannot look like the picture because the picture is of a different animal.

• Normal: colour lighter or darker than the photograph, uneven ridging, the two handles not matching, a surface you can feel.
• Not normal: a crack, a loose insert, a gap that catches a fingernail. Those are ours and we will fix them.
• Care: keep it out of long direct sunlight and do not store the knife wet. No oil needed.

The dagger, and one honest warning

Symmetrical, point on the centreline, so the knife handles the same whichever way it opens. It gives up the spine, so there is nowhere to rest a thumb, and it sharpens slowly because there are two bevels.

More importantly for a gift: double-edged blades are treated differently from single-edged ones under the law in a number of jurisdictions, sometimes regardless of length. If you are posting this to somebody, that is worth checking on their behalf before you order rather than after.

D2 steel at 220 grams on a butterfly knife

An air-hardening tool steel: about one and a half percent carbon and eleven to twelve percent chromium, just under the threshold for stainless. Best edge retention we sell, stubborn to sharpen, and heat treated to 58-60 HRC so it rolls rather than chips when it lands on a floor.

Two hundred and twenty grams is the heavier weight in this series: deliberate through a rotation and forgiving of a mistake.

Ordering this stag horn D2 balisong

A fitted leather sheath is in the box, which matters for a gift because it means the thing arrives looking like a considered object rather than a knife in a bag. US shipping is free, flat $49 to anywhere else for the whole order.