BF-59 Honey Bee High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife

The BF-59 Honey Bee is a 24cm high carbon balisong at 180g, brass and kamagong, $129.80. Buy a high carbon knife and within a few months it will not look like the photograph any more. This page is about making that happen deliberately rather than by accident.

You can force a patina, and a lot of owners do

Left alone, a high carbon blade develops a grey oxide layer from handling and air. That layer is stable, it is not rust, and it slows further corrosion down. It arrives unevenly and it takes months.

Or you can put one on in an afternoon. Forcing a patina is an old trick, it is completely reversible with a stone, and it gives you a blade that is both protected and unmistakably yours from the first week.

Three methods that actually work

Whichever you use: degrease the blade first with washing up liquid and dry it properly, keep the liquid off the brass and the wood, and rinse and dry thoroughly afterwards. Then oil it lightly. A forced patina is a head start, not a coating, and the blade still wants the same wipe it always did.

If you hate the result, twenty minutes with a stone and some fine abrasive takes it back to bare steel and you can start again. Nothing here is permanent, which is why it is worth trying.

Patina is not rust and the difference matters

• Patina is grey, blue-grey or brown, smooth, part of the surface, and it protects the steel underneath.
• Rust is orange, rough, powdery, lifts off on a cloth, and it eats into the steel leaving pits behind.
• Patina comes from normal handling. Rust comes from being left wet.
• Pitting is permanent. Everything else on this list is not.

People panic at the first grey mark and try to polish it off. Leave it. You are removing the thing that was protecting the blade.

The steel underneath

Plain carbon steel: iron, about one percent carbon, essentially no chromium. The absence of chromium is why it patinas at all, and it is also why the grain is fine enough to take a keener edge than any stainless we sell. We heat treat to 58-60 HRC, which is where a knife that gets dropped wants to be. A couple of points harder and the edge chips on impact instead of rolling.

It sharpens on any stone in minutes. No diamond plate, no special equipment, no swearing.

180 grams, brass and kamagong

The standard 24cm frame with enough weight that rotations carry themselves. The brass will go brown alongside the blade going grey, which is the nice part of owning a knife where both halves age. The kamagong is Philippine ebony and will do essentially nothing for a decade, which is also useful.

The name

The brass goes gold and the patina goes dark, so there is a stripe argument to be made here. We are not going to make it at length.

Ordering

Unsharpened trainer at the same $129.80, chosen above Add to Cart. Same steel, same weight, no edge, and worth noting that a trainer patinas exactly the same way, so you can practise all of the above on one without ever putting an edge at risk.

A fitted leather sheath comes with it. US shipping is free, everywhere else is a flat $49 for the entire order. Check the knife law that applies at your address before you order.