Crane Handmade VG10 Super Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Brass and Carabao Horn Handle | 29cm Full Size Collector Gift | BF-30

The BF-30 Crane is the 29cm VG10 knife with carabao horn handles. A 14cm blade, 225g.

Carabao horn, and where the word balisong comes from

Carabao is the Philippine water buffalo. Its horn is the original balisong handle material, and it is the reason the knife has the name it does. One of the accepted etymologies is baling sungay, broken or folding horn, which describes both what the handle was made of and what the knife does. Everything else about the design is negotiable. The horn is where it started.

Carabao horn is black to dark grey, sometimes with amber banding running through it where the horn was thinner. It is denser and harder than deer horn, takes a higher polish, and it is the material a Batangas smith would have reached for in 1910 without thinking about it.

Carabao against deer horn, since we sell both

Carabao is cheaper here because it is easier for us to source in usable sizes, not because it is the lesser material. If anything the historical case runs the other way.

What 225 grams on a 29cm frame is actually like

Heavy and slow, and both of those words are compliments in this context. The knife rotates deliberately. You can feel every stage of a rollover instead of arriving at the end of one and wondering how you got there. Once it is moving it wants to keep moving, so aerials and helicopters have a satisfying inevitability to them.

The cost is stamina. A long session with 225g in one hand will find muscles in your forearm that a 150g knife never bothers. That is not a reason to avoid it, but it is a reason to buy the trainer if you are learning, because tiredness is when the drops happen.

What VG10 steel does on a traditional butterfly knife frame

There is a small tension in this knife that we quite like. The frame and the handle material are as traditional as it gets, and the blade is a Japanese stainless designed in the last few decades for kitchen knives.

VG10 runs around one percent carbon and fifteen percent chromium with cobalt and vanadium keeping the grain tight. Ours is heat treated to 58-60 HRC. Against the high carbon a Batangas smith would have used, it holds an edge far longer and will not rust if you put it away after a humid afternoon. Against that, high carbon takes a slightly finer edge and comes back on any stone in minutes, where VG10 wants ceramic or diamond and a bit of patience.

We do not think the old smiths would have argued. They used the best steel they could get hold of, which is exactly what this is.

Looking after a carabao horn balisong handle

• Out of direct sun. Prolonged sunlight dries horn and dulls the black.
• Wipe it dry if it gets wet. Horn absorbs water slowly and releases it slowly, and a swollen insert is not a thing we can fix remotely.
• It will take a shine where your hand sits, and that shine is worth more than the factory polish.
• Two knives will not match. Two handles on the same knife may not quite match. That is horn.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this VG10 balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, selected above Add to Cart. Same horn, same 225g, same balance, no edge. It costs the same because grinding an edge is one operation in a build with many.

A fitted leather sheath is in the box, cut for the 29cm frame rather than the standard 24cm one. Free US shipping, flat $49 to anywhere else regardless of order size. Balisong law varies by state and by country and is worth five minutes of your own reading before ordering.