Bear Handmade 440C Stainless Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Brass and Kamagong Wood Handle | 24cm EDC Flipper Gift for Him | BF-13

The BF-13 Bear is the only 440C knife in the range with a wood handle rather than horn. Twenty-four centimetres open, a 12cm blade, 175g, brass with kamagong inserts. That makes it the useful page for settling the wood question.

Wood or horn, since we sell both

Almost every knife in this run has horn inserts. This one has kamagong, and the BF-18 Bumblebee is the same frame, the same weight and exactly.50 with carabao horn instead. You could not ask for a cleaner comparison, so here it is.

If you want the knife you get to match the knife in the photograph, buy the wood. If you want an object that is unarguably one of one, buy the horn. Neither is the better material and both cost us about the same to fit, which is why they cost you the same.

What kamagong actually is as a balisong handle

Philippine ebony. The heartwood is one of the densest timbers that will still behave as a handle: dense enough that a block of it sinks rather than floats, and so close-grained that it barely accepts an oil finish because there is nowhere for the oil to go.

What that density buys you is stability. Open-grained timbers take on and give up moisture with the seasons, and an insert that shrinks in a dry winter becomes an insert with a gap in it. Kamagong barely moves. It also resists dents from the tiled floor your knife is eventually going to meet.

It costs us more in tooling than a softer wood would, because dense timber blunts cutters quickly and burns if you rush the cut. That is our problem rather than yours, but it is part of why a wooden handle here is not the cheap option.

175 grams on a 24cm frame

The middle of our range and the weight most owners settle on once they have handled a few. Enough mass that a rotation carries itself and you get a moment to correct a mistake, not so much that a long session becomes a forearm workout.

440C on a butterfly knife, briefly

An American high-carbon stainless, roughly one percent carbon and seventeen percent chromium. The chromium is why it does not rust, the carbon is why it hardens properly, and the C is what separates it from the 440A that turns up in cheap knives under a carefully shortened name.

Ours run at 58-60 HRC. It sharpens easily on any decent stone, keeps a working edge for a long time, and asks nothing of you between sessions. On a knife with a handle that also needs no maintenance, you end up with something you can genuinely ignore.

The name

It is a heavy-ish knife with a dark wooden handle and it is called Bear. That is the entire chain of reasoning and we are not going to dress it up.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this kamagong balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, selected above Add to Cart. Same steel, same wood, same 175g, no edge, same price, because grinding an edge is one operation in a build with many.

A fitted leather sheath comes with it. Free US shipping, flat $49 to anywhere else for the entire order. Check your local knife law before ordering.

The Bear carries a 440C blade behind brass bolsters and a kamagong wood handle, and our step by step balisong sharpening guide is worth bookmarking for when the edge needs restoring rather than just touching up. It falls under the full Balisong Butterfly collection. The BF-14 Beetle is built the same way, same steel, same brass and wood handle, and makes a natural second knife.