Philippine Visayan Damascus Steel Blade Butterfly Balisong Knife USA Made Gift For Him With Beautiful Handle BF-127

The BF-127 is a Philippine Visayan balisong with a Damascus blade: 29cm open, a 14cm blade, 220g, brass with black micarta. There is an obvious contradiction on this knife and we would rather address it than hope you do not notice.

A synthetic handle on a heritage knife

Everything about this knife is old. The 29cm frame is the traditional Visayan and Batangas full size. The blade is forge-welded by hand, which is about as pre-industrial a process as still exists. And the handle is a twentieth century composite invented for electrical insulation.

We could have put horn on it. Horn is what a Visayan smith would have used, and we build plenty of knives with horn. We chose micarta here deliberately, and here is the argument.

What micarta actually is on a balisong handle

Layers of cloth or paper soaked in phenolic resin and cured under heat and pressure. That is the whole recipe, and it dates to the early 1900s, which makes it roughly contemporary with the Batangas balisong pattern itself. Not traditional to the Philippines, but not modern either.

It is dense, dimensionally stable, and completely indifferent to water, humidity, sunlight and temperature. It does not swell, crack, fade or need feeding. And the cloth weave gives it a faint texture that makes it grippier than polished horn when your hands are warm, which after twenty minutes of flipping they will be.

The case for it on this particular knife

The bottom row is the honest reason. A Damascus blade is a busy object, and a busy handle underneath it turns the knife into an argument. Flat black micarta gets out of the way and lets the pattern do the work.

The second row is the practical reason. This blade is high carbon steel with no chromium in it, so it needs wiping and oiling. A handle that needs nothing at all balances that.

What we are not going to claim

That micarta is more traditional than horn. It is not. If the heritage argument is what you are buying, our carabao horn and stag horn knives exist and we would point you at those without hesitation.

What we will say is that the old smiths used whatever material was best and available, and there is nothing in that tradition that says a maker should refuse a better material out of nostalgia. They would have used micarta if somebody had handed them a sheet of it.

The Damascus steel on this butterfly knife

Layers of high carbon steel forge-welded, folded and drawn out. The pattern is the boundary between layers, revealed by acid etching, and no two blades come out the same because it depends on how that particular billet moved under the hammer.

Heat treated to 58-60 HRC. Very keen edge, comes back on an ordinary stone in minutes. It will spot if left wet, so wipe the blade dry when you put it down, oil it lightly once a month, and do not store the knife inside the leather sheath.

Twenty-nine centimetres, 220 grams

The traditional full size. A longer handle sweeps a longer arc, so the knife rotates more slowly for the same wrist movement, and that slowness gives you real time to see a mistake coming. It asks a firm grip in exchange, because 220g will find out whether you were holding on.

Ordering this Damascus balisong

Unsharpened trainer, chosen above Add to Cart. A fitted leather sheath comes with it, cut for the 29cm frame rather than the standard 24cm. US shipping is free, flat $49 to anywhere else for the whole order.