Malayan Civet Handmade High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Brass and Kamagong Wood Handle | 24cm EDC Flipper Gift for Him | BF-74

The BF-74 Malayan Civet is a 24cm high carbon balisong, 12cm blade, 180g, brass and kamagong. Everybody says to oil a carbon steel blade. Almost nobody says which oil, how much, or where. So that is this page.

What the oil is actually doing

Two different jobs, and they want different products.

On the blade, oil is a barrier. It sits between bare steel and the water in the air, and that is the entire mechanism. A film you can barely see is enough. A thick coat does nothing extra except attract dust.

In the pivots, oil is a lubricant. It reduces friction between the pivot pin and the handle so the action stays smooth. Here too, more is worse: excess oil creeps out into the handle channels, mixes with pocket lint and brass particles, and turns into a grey paste that makes the knife stiffer than it was dry.

Which oil

If you want one bottle for everything, buy food-grade mineral oil. It will last years and it costs less than a takeaway.

How much, and where

1. Blade: two drops on a cloth, not on the steel. Wipe the whole blade including the choil, where the edge meets the tang. That corner holds water and nobody dries it.
2. Pivots: one drop each. One. Then flip the knife thirty or forty times and wipe away whatever comes back out.
3. Channels: nothing. Blow them clean with air, do not oil them. Oil in the channel is how the paste starts.
4. Handle: nothing. The kamagong needs no oil and the brass does not either.

How often: the blade monthly, or after anything damp. The pivots twice a year, and clean before you oil rather than oiling on top of dirt.

The mistake almost everybody makes

Oiling a stiff pivot without cleaning it first. A pivot that has stiffened over a year has stiffened because there is material in it. Adding oil to that turns dry grit into wet grit, which is worse, and then people conclude the knife has worn out.

Blow the channels out with compressed air, run a cotton bud along them until it stops coming out grey, and then add one drop. Nine times out of ten the knife comes back to how it felt new.

The steel: high carbon on a balisong

Plain carbon steel: iron, about one percent carbon, essentially no chromium. Everything above exists because of that missing chromium. What you get in exchange is the finest edge we can grind and a blade that comes back on any ordinary stone in minutes.

Heat treated to 58-60 HRC, where it rolls rather than chips when it lands on something hard.

The frame on this high carbon butterfly knife

Twenty-four centimetres at 180g, the standard size at the weight most owners settle on. Brass bolsters, kamagong inserts. Kamagong is Philippine ebony, dense and close-grained, and it is the one component here with no maintenance story at all.

Ordering, and what ships with this balisong

Unsharpened trainer, selected above Add to Cart. Everything on this page applies to it identically, since a blunt carbon blade rusts exactly as readily as a sharp one.

A fitted leather sheath comes with it. Free US shipping, flat $49 to anywhere else for the entire order.

This 24cm Malayan Civet balisong runs high carbon steel against a brass and kamagong wood handle, a combination built for regular flipping rather than a display case. A quick wipe and oil after use keeps any blade steel looking its best, and our guide on cleaning and oiling a butterfly knife walks through that routine step by step. For more like it, the rest of our high carbon steel balisongs has the full set, and the Masked Palm high carbon balisong is a natural next stop if this one is not quite the shape you want.