Kingfisher High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-67

The BF-67 Kingfisher is a 24cm high carbon balisong, 12cm blade, 180g, brass and kamagong. If this is the first balisong you have ever bought, here is what the next six months actually look like.

Month one: you will drop it

Everybody does. Not once, repeatedly, usually on a hard floor, usually while trying something you saw in a fifteen second video. Any page that implies otherwise was written by somebody who has never held one.

So buy the trainer. It is the same knife with no edge ground, and it removes the only genuinely bad outcome from a month where the good outcomes are guaranteed anyway. You can buy a sharp one later. Fingers are less obliging.

What you learn in month one is which handle is which. The bite handle sits against the edge and the safe handle does not, and telling them apart without looking is the entire foundation of the hobby.

The rough timeline

Nobody follows that exactly. Some people get rollovers in three days and then plateau for two months. Some struggle for a fortnight and then everything arrives at once.

Four things worth knowing early

• Gravity does the work. If your shoulder is involved, you are fighting the knife. Let the handle fall and steer it.
• Practise over a bed or a rug. Not because you will damage the knife, but because a hard floor makes you flinch and flinching is what makes you drop it.
• Learn your weak hand from the start. Leaving it until later means learning it twice.
• Stop when you get tired. Nearly every bad drop happens in the last ten minutes of a session.

Why high carbon is a good first balisong steel

Because you will sharpen it, and this is the steel that teaches you how. High carbon gives ground quickly on an ordinary stone, forms a burr you can actually feel within a couple of minutes, and lets you see the result of what you did. D2 would leave you forty minutes in and none the wiser.

The price is that it rusts if left wet. Wipe the blade dry when you put it down. That is the entire requirement, it takes eight seconds, and if it sounds like too much then our 440C and VG10 knives are a better fit at a similar price.

Iron, about one percent carbon, essentially no chromium, heat treated to 58-60 HRC. Harder would chip when you drop it, and you are going to drop it.

The high carbon butterfly knife itself

Twenty-four centimetres open at 180g, which is the standard frame at the weight most people settle on. Enough momentum that a rotation carries itself and gives you time to correct, not so much that a long session hurts.

Brass bolsters with kamagong inserts. Kamagong is Philippine ebony, dense and close-grained, and it will need nothing from you in the decade you own this. The brass will go brown, which is brass behaving normally rather than wearing out.

Ordering this kamagong handle balisong

Trainer option above the Add to Cart button, same price, and we mean the recommendation. A fitted leather sheath is in the box.

US shipping is free, everywhere else a flat $49 for the whole order. Balisong law differs by country and by US state. Check what applies at your own address before you order, because it is your address rather than ours that the rule attaches to.