Dormouse Handmade VG10 Super Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Brass and Kamagong Wood Handle | 24cm Lightweight Flipper Gift | BF-35

The BF-35 Dormouse is a 24cm VG10 balisong at 150g, brass and kamagong. It is one of the two cheapest knives in the VG10 range, and it is the one we hand people who have never flipped anything in their lives.

Why 150 grams is the beginner’s weight

A balisong rotates around your finger and the weight decides how fast. Lighter knives turn quicker, which sounds like a disadvantage for a learner and mostly is not, for one reason: a light knife you have lost control of hits your knuckle with less behind it.

The other half of the argument is stamina. Learning rollovers takes hundreds of repetitions, and hundreds of repetitions with 225g in one hand ends in a sore forearm and sloppy technique. At 150g you can keep going long enough to actually build the muscle memory.

The trade is that a light knife is less forgiving about timing. It arrives sooner than you expect. Most people find that easier to fix than the alternative.

What the first month actually looks like

Everybody drops it. Everybody. If a page tells you otherwise it was written by somebody who has never held one.

Buy the trainer version of this one

We say this on every product page and we mean it most here. The unsharpened trainer is the same knife: same steel, same 150g, same pivots, same balance, no edge ground on it.

People assume the blunt one should be cheaper and get suspicious when it is not. Grinding an edge is a single operation in a build with many, so removing it saves us close to nothing, and a discount would be theatre. What it saves you is the month where a live 12cm blade is passing your knuckles while your timing is still guesswork.

You can always buy a sharp one later. You cannot un-cut a finger.

VG10 steel in a butterfly knife, in short

VG10 is a Japanese stainless out of Takefu, about one percent carbon and fifteen percent chromium with cobalt and vanadium keeping the grain tight. It takes a fine edge, holds it a long time, and does not rust if you put it away slightly damp.

Ours run at 58-60 HRC. That is a little softer than a Japanese kitchen knife and it is a deliberate choice for a knife that gets dropped: at this hardness the edge rolls when it hits the floor instead of chipping, and a rolled edge comes back on a stone.

Brass and kamagong on a balisong handle

Kamagong is Philippine ebony, dense and nearly black, and it does not need oiling or feeding or any of the maintenance an open-grained timber would demand. The brass will go brown over a year or two. That is brass doing what brass does, and polishing it back only restarts the clock.

The name

Dormice are small, they sleep a great deal, and they are not remotely fierce. We are not going to construct an argument about stealth and precision around an animal best known for napping. It is a small light knife with a good name.

Sheath and shipping on this VG10 balisong

A fitted leather sheath comes with it, cut for the 24cm frame. US shipping is free and everywhere else is a flat $49 for the whole order regardless of size, so international buyers do better ordering more than one at a time.

Balisong legality varies by country and by US state. Check the rule at your own address before ordering rather than after the parcel is in transit.

Once the Dormouse arrives, a light wipe and occasional oiling on the pivots keeps it running the way it should, and the right way to clean and oil a balisong sets out how to do that without damaging the wood handle. It is part of the full Balisong Butterfly collection. The BF-36 Dragonfly carries the same brass and kamagong wood pairing on the same frame.

Buying for groomsmen? This balisong also comes as a matched set of 6, 15% less than buying six singly, and each one can carry its own engraved name.