Eagle Vg10 Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-38

The BF-38 Eagle is a 24cm VG10 balisong, 150g, brass and kamagong.

Six knives, one spec sheet, six prices

Same steel. Same frame size. Same weight. Same handle materials. Twenty-five dollars between the ends of that list.

So where does the money go

These are made by hand in small runs, and the cost of a run is mostly hours. Hours vary with things a spec sheet has no column for: how much shaping the handle profile needs, how the kamagong blank behaved that week, how much finishing work the brass wanted, and how many knives were in the run.

The Eagle carries more hand work on the handle contour and the finish than the Falcon does. That is the whole of it. It is not a better blade, it is not a harder heat treat, and there is nothing in this knife that will outlast the cheaper one.

We could hide that by inventing tiers with names on them. Plenty of shops do. We would rather put the table above on the page and let you decide whether the difference is worth twenty-one dollars to you, because for a fair number of people it will not be, and we would rather sell you the Falcon than have you feel got at.

When the Eagle is the right one anyway

Buy this one if you have handled both and the contour suits your hand better, or if you simply prefer how it looks. Those are legitimate reasons to spend money and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we will not do is tell you the extra buys performance, because it does not.

The steel: what VG10 does on a balisong

VG10 is a Japanese stainless from Takefu: roughly one percent carbon, fifteen percent chromium, with cobalt, molybdenum and vanadium in small amounts. Fine grain, keen edge, long edge life, and enough chromium that damp is not your problem.

Ours is heat treated to 58-60 HRC, slightly under where kitchen makers run it. A chef’s knife lives on a board. A balisong lives on the floor at some point in its first month, and at this hardness the edge rolls on impact rather than chipping.

Sharpening wants ceramic or diamond and a consistent angle. Once or twice a year in normal use.

150 grams and a plain frame

Light and quick. It turns fast, stops fast, and does not tire your forearm over a long session, which makes it good for chained sequences and good for practice. If you want the knife to carry you through a rollover on momentum alone, our 180g knives do that and this one does not.

Kamagong is Philippine ebony: dense, close-grained, nearly black, and stable enough that it will not crack or shrink through a dry winter. The brass will darken to brown over a couple of years and there is no version of owning brass where it does not.

The name, briefly

Eagles have famously good eyesight and this knife does not, so we will leave the metaphor where we found it.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this VG10 balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, selected above Add to Cart. Same steel, same weight, same balance, no edge. The price is identical because grinding an edge is one step in a long build.

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 you order.