Ibis High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-64

The BF-64 Ibis is the small one. Fifteen centimetres overall with a 7cm high carbon blade, an extra thick blade and inner liner, brass handles with kamagong wood inserts, and 165 grams on the scale. It is for someone who wants a genuinely pocketable balisong and understands that small does not mean light. Trainer version available at the same price above Add to Cart.

Fifteen centimetres and 165 grams, which is a strange combination

Look at those two numbers next to each other for a moment. Our standard 24cm knives weigh 180g. This one is nine centimetres shorter and only fifteen grams lighter.

That is the entire character of the Ibis and it is not an accident. The blade is ground extra thick and there is an inner liner in the handle, so the mass that a longer knife spreads over a longer frame is concentrated here into something you can close your hand around completely.

In practice it feels dense in a way that surprises people who ordered it expecting a keychain toy. It flips fast because the rotational distance is short, and it stops fast for the same reason. Timing that suits a 24cm knife will overshoot on this one for the first week.

How it compares to the standard balisong frame

Fifteen grams of difference across nine centimetres of length is the number to sit with. Everything else follows from it.

What the extra thick blade and inner liner are doing

A short blade in thin stock feels flimsy, and flimsy is the one thing a balisong cannot afford, because the blade is the part that slams into the handle channel a few thousand times a month. Thicker stock resists the flex and the liner stiffens the handle around the pivot.

The side effect is that the knife is not a slicer in the way a long thin blade is. Seven centimetres of thick high carbon will cut anything you sensibly ask a pocket knife to cut, and it will not fillet a fish. We would rather you know that before ordering than after.

Who should not buy the Ibis

We sell 161 knives and we are not short of alternatives, so here is the honest list of people this one is wrong for.

• Complete beginners. Short arcs are less forgiving. Learn on a 24cm frame and come back to this.
• Large hands doing complex rollovers. There is simply less handle to work with, and past a certain hand size the knife disappears into your palm.
• Anyone who wanted the traditional look. The classic Batangas proportion is 29cm open. This is deliberately not that.
• Anyone buying by the gram. If you assumed shorter meant lighter, re-read the table.

Who it is right for: people who actually carry, people with smaller hands who find 24cm unwieldy, and experienced flippers who want something that behaves differently from everything else in the drawer.

High carbon steel in a short bladed butterfly knife

High carbon takes the finest edge we can put on steel and sharpens back on an ordinary stone in minutes. On a 7cm blade that maintenance session is even shorter, which is a small pleasure.

Hardness is 58-60 HRC, the same window as the full-size knives, and it counts for more here than the number suggests. A 7cm edge has less steel to spread a hard cut across, so the tip carries a bigger share of the work, and a softer heat treat would show up at exactly that point first.

It will spot if you leave it wet. A short blade lives in a pocket, and pockets are warm and humid, so this is more relevant here than on a knife that sits on a shelf. Wipe it dry, oil it occasionally, and it will darken into a stable grey patina rather than orange pitting. If that maintenance sounds like a burden, our D2 knives resist corrosion considerably better and ask for a diamond plate in exchange.

Ordering this high carbon balisong, and the trainer

The unsharpened trainer costs the same as the live blade, because grinding an edge is a small part of building a balisong and skipping it does not save us money. On a knife this fast, the trainer is a genuinely sensible first purchase.

A fitted leather sheath comes with it, as it does with everything we make. On a knife this size that is not a formality. A 15cm balisong is small enough that people genuinely do carry it, and a bare blade loose in a bag finds things to ruin.

US shipping is free. International is a flat $49 no matter how much is in the box. Local knife law is worth five minutes of your own reading before you order, particularly for a knife small enough to actually carry.