Chicken 440c Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-23

The BF-23 Chicken is the heaviest knife in this series at 225g, built at the traditional 29cm size with a 14cm blade, and it is the only one here with Visayan Philippine deer horn handles. Brass frame, 440C blade. It is also called Chicken, which is a problem we may as well address before anything else.

Yes, it is called Chicken

Nobody has ever bought a knife because the name made them feel dangerous and then discovered the name was Chicken. We know. The series is named after animals in alphabetical order and this is where the alphabet landed.

We could have quietly renamed it something with a raptor in it. Plenty of shops would have. But the pattern has been called BF-23 Chicken since we started making it and changing the label to flatter a customer is exactly the sort of thing this shop was set up to not do. If the name puts you off, buy the BF-20 Caterpillar instead, which is 5g lighter and equally traditional in size. If it does not, you get the heaviest knife in the range for less than the plainest one.

Visayan deer horn, the only one in this twelve

Deer horn is a different material from the carabao horn on the BF-17 and from bone, and the difference is structural rather than cosmetic.

• Denser and harder than bone. Antler is built to survive being smashed into other antler. It takes a knock better than a bone panel does.
• Warm, slightly waxy surface. Grippier than polished bone, and it stays grippy when your hands are damp, which matters more than it sounds during a long session.
• Irregular colour. Creams, tans and darker streaks, following the density of the antler it was cut from. No two panels agree with each other.
• Ages slowly. Deer horn changes less over a decade than kamagong or brass does. What you buy is roughly what you keep.

225g at 29cm: know what you are picking up

This is a large, heavy knife and the two properties compound. 225g on a 29cm frame means a long, slow, heavy arc.

Specifications

29cm is the old measurement

The traditional Batangas full size was veinte y nueve, 29cm open. Most modern balisongs, including nine of the twelve knives in this run, are built shorter for pocket carry. This one is not. If part of what you want from a Filipino balisong is the size the pattern was actually designed at, that is a genuine reason to choose the BF-23 over the 24cm knives, and it has nothing to do with what it is called.

The 440C blade

440C, roughly 58 HRC, 14cm long. High-carbon stainless: it takes a good edge, it comes back on an ordinary stone in a few minutes, and it rolls rather than chips when the knife hits the floor. D2 holds an edge longer and we sell D2 too, but D2 is more brittle and this is a knife you throw around your hand on purpose.

With 14cm to maintain, the fast-resharpening part of that trade is worth more here than on the 12cm knives.

Trainer

Order it unsharpened using the option above the Add to Cart button, at no change in price. For a 225g knife at 29cm this is the version we would suggest first for anyone who has not flipped something this size before. Same deer horn, same mass, same slow arc, no edge.

Shipping this 440C butterfly knife

Free in the US, flat $49 to anywhere else regardless of order size. Fitted leather sheath cut for the 29cm frame, included.

the 440C is taken to 58-60 HRC, the same hardness we use across the whole shelf.