Goat Handmade VG10 Super Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Brass and Narra Wood Handle | 24cm EDC Flipper Gift for Him | BF-52

The BF-52 Goat is a 180g VG10 balisong, and it is the only knife in our thirty-piece VG10 range wearing narra rather than kamagong, bone or horn. Brass handles, narra wood inserts, a 12cm blade in a 24cm frame. It is also one of the cheapest of the heavy knives here, and the wood is the reason for both of those things.

Narra, not the usual dark wood

Narra is the national tree of the Philippines and the timber looks nothing like kamagong. Where kamagong reads as near-black, narra runs from a warm honey through to a deep reddish brown, with open, visible grain and a natural shimmer that moves as you turn the handle in the light.

That last part is worth knowing before you order. Narra is one of those timbers that appears to change depth depending on the angle, which is why furniture makers have used it for a very long time and why a photograph never quite does it justice. Set this knife next to any of the kamagong builds and it is immediately the warm one.

Why the narra knife costs less

Straightforwardly, narra is a less expensive material for us than the black heartwood of kamagong, and that difference lands in the price. Only two of the eight 180g knives in the range come in lower, the BF-27 Cow.85 and the BF-32 Deer. The Goat is doing the same job with a different face.

Nothing else has been reduced. Same VG10 blade, same brass frame, same fitting and the same pivot tuning. Anyone who tells you the wood in the handle changes how a balisong flips is guessing.

Living with a narra balisong handle

• It is softer than kamagong. Not soft, but it will take a mark from a hard landing where kamagong would shrug. Treat it as the one part of the knife worth being careful with.
• It deepens with light and time. Narra darkens and goes redder over the years, which most owners consider an improvement.
• Grain is visible and individual. The figure in your inserts is not the figure in the photograph. It cannot be.
• It needs almost nothing. A wipe with a dry cloth is the whole routine.

Specification

180g and what it means for flipping

This is the heavier half of the series. The mass carries the handle round through a rollover so the motion feels continuous, and it holds a line well in the air on aerials. The costs are real too. Quick reversals take effort, and your forearm will call time before it would on one of the 150g knives like the Dog or the Fox. For learning the fundamentals we think 180g is the friendlier weight. For fast trick chains it is not.

The name, and no more than that

These knives are named after animals because a range of thirty needed thirty names, and we are not going to build you a paragraph about the sure-footedness of goats on Batangas hillsides. What is actually true is that this is the warm-coloured one, the light-handled one against a series of dark ones, and the cheapest heavy knife here bar one. Those are the reasons to buy it.

The steel, and why VG10 goes with a narra handle

VG10 is a Japanese stainless developed for kitchen knives, around 60 HRC and roughly 15% chromium. It sharpens fine, holds an edge and does not rust. It is also the cheapest steel band we sell, which surprises people every time. The one real drawback is that a fully dull VG10 edge takes more patience on a stone than 440C.

Trainer, sheath and shipping on this narra butterfly knife

Use the option above the Add to Cart button to order it unsharpened. A fitted leather sheath comes with every knife. Shipping is free within the US and a flat $49 to anywhere else in the world.

the VG10 comes out of the quench at 58-60 HRC. Harder than that and it chips; softer and you are sharpening it every fortnight.