Filipino Traditional D2 Steel Beautiful Blade Butterfly Balisong Knife USA Made Gift For Him With Stag Horn Handle BF-118

Stag horn is shed and regrown every year, so no two pieces are figured alike and the handle you receive will not match anyone else’s. D2 tool steel, brass and stag horn, 24cm open, 12cm blade, 220g. This page is about what horn is like to actually hold, and where it comes from, because those are the two things worth knowing before you spend the money.

Shed, not taken

Deer drop their antlers annually and grow a new set. That is the entire reason stag horn has been a knife handle material for centuries: it is a renewable material that turns up on the ground every year without anything having to happen to the animal.

We mention this because we get asked, and because the question deserves a straight answer rather than a paragraph of reassuring vagueness. If a supplier cannot tell you where their horn comes from, that is worth noticing.

What it feels like, compared with wood

Different in a way that photographs cannot convey and that most people have an immediate opinion about.

The wet grip line is the practical argument. If you flip for any length of time your hands get damp, and a smooth handle starts to move against your palm in a way you compensate for without noticing until you stop. Horn does not do that.

The pocket line is the argument against. Some people find the ridges reassuring and some find them irritating, and there is no way to know which you are until you hold one. We would rather say that than pretend everybody loves horn.

Specifications for this D2 stag horn balisong

• Blade: D2 tool steel
• Hardness: 58-60 HRC
• Handle: brass with stag horn
• Overall length: 24cm open
• Blade length: 12cm
• Weight: 220g
• Identical for the trainer version

220g puts this at the heavier end of our 24cm knives.

Fitting horn to brass is the awkward part

Wood arrives flat and stays flat. Horn arrives curved, hollow in places, thicker at one end than the other, and every blank has to be read before it is cut.

The bench work is deciding where in a piece of antler this handle is going to come from, then getting both scales out of material that will look like they belong together without being identical. That is judgement rather than measurement, and it is why horn handled knives take longer to make and why fewer makers bother with them.

It is also why the two sides of your knife will look related but not matched. That is the correct outcome. Two perfectly identical stag scales would mean somebody had sanded away most of the character to get there.

The blade is the opposite kind of job. Hardness is a number, 58-60 HRC, and a blade either comes off the quench at it or goes back for another go. Steel does not have to be read the way a piece of antler has to be read, which is a relief after a morning of reading antler.

Looking after a stag horn balisong handle

Less than you think, and the failure modes are specific.

• Horn cracks from sustained dry heat, not from ordinary use. Keep it off dashboards and away from radiators.
• It does not need oiling. Occasional handling is enough.
• It yellows over the years toward cream and amber, which is ageing rather than damage.
• Water is a problem for the pivot, not the horn. Dry the knife, oil the pivots.

The knife care guide covers pivot tension, which on a 220g knife is the setting that decides whether it feels good or feels dead.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this D2 butterfly knife

Above Add to Cart there is an option to have it unsharpened. It is this knife with the bevels left blunt, so the weight, balance and grip you practise with are the ones you keep. Given that the whole point of a horn handle is how it behaves when your hands are damp, practising on it rather than on a plastic trainer is not a small detail. More in the trainer guide.

Fitted leather sheath included. US shipping free, worldwide flat $49.