Insect Handmade High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Stainless and Bone Handle | 24cm EDC Flipper Gift for Him | BF-65

The BF-65 Insect is the odd one in this run. Every other high carbon knife we build carries brass bolsters and kamagong. This one has stainless bolsters and bone inserts, 24cm open, a 12cm blade, 180g.

A rusting blade on a rustproof frame

There is a contradiction in this knife and we like it. The blade is plain carbon steel, which will spot if you leave it damp. The bolsters are stainless, which will not. The bone will not either.

What that means in practice is a knife where exactly one component needs your attention, and it is the component you were going to wipe anyway. On our brass and kamagong knives the brass is also changing over time, which some owners love and some find distracting. Here the frame stays put and the blade does all the ageing.

If you have wanted a carbon blade but disliked the idea of a handle that also darkens on its own schedule, this is the knife.

Bone handles, and what they are actually like on a balisong

Bone has been a knife handle material for as long as knives have existed, and it turns up on this frame because it does something the other materials do not.

The row that matters most is the wet hands one. A polished horn handle in a warm room after twenty minutes of flipping is a genuinely slippery object. Bone keeps its grip because the surface is not perfectly smooth, and that texture is the reason people who flip hard tend to end up owning one.

Bone yellows very slowly with light and handling. Nobody notices it happening and everybody notices it after five years, and it looks better for it.

Stainless bolsters

Lighter than brass by volume, so there is more of the frame doing the same job and the weight sits a shade differently. The practical effect is small and honest: it turns a fraction more evenly and stops a fraction less abruptly than a brass-bolstered knife at the same 180g.

Cosmetically the difference is not small at all. Stainless stays the colour it is. In ten years this knife will look the way it looks today apart from the blade and the bone, and for some owners that is exactly the point.

The high carbon steel in this balisong

Plain carbon steel: iron, around one percent carbon, essentially no chromium. Fine grain, so it takes the keenest edge we can grind, and it sharpens back on any ordinary stone in minutes.

Heat treated to 58-60 HRC, which is where it rolls rather than chips when it lands on something hard. Wipe the blade dry when you finish with it and a light oil once a month covers the rest. Neglected badly it pits orange, which is permanent. Wiped casually it goes grey, which protects it.

The name

Ninety-odd knives, ninety-odd animals, and by the time we got here somebody wrote down Insect. We have made peace with it.

Ordering this high carbon butterfly knife

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife, chosen above Add to Cart. Same bone, same 180g, no edge, same price, because grinding an edge is a single operation in a build with many.

A fitted leather sheath is in the box. Do not store the knife inside it, since leather traps damp and the blade here is the one part of this knife that cares. Free US shipping, flat $49 elsewhere for the whole order.

Insect pairs high carbon steel with a stainless and bone handle, and at 24cm it sits comfortably in the hand. For a sense of how this size compares to the rest of the range, our balisong sizes guide lays out blade and handle length across the whole lineup. You can browse the rest of the rest of our high carbon steel balisongs from here, and the King Cobra high carbon balisong is a close neighbour worth a look if you want a second option in hand.