Millipede High Carbon Steel Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-77

The BF-77 Millipede is a 24cm Filipino balisong in high carbon steel, 12cm blade, brass handles with kamagong wood inserts, 180 grams. It suits a flipper who works long continuous sequences rather than single showy openings, and anyone who wants a knife that visibly ages with use. The trainer version costs the same and is selected above Add to Cart.

Many legs, long sequences

A millipede does not move in one dramatic burst. It moves in a long, continuous, slightly hypnotic sequence, which is a fair description of what most people actually do with a balisong once they are past the first few months.

Beginners learn openings. Experienced flippers learn chains, where one movement feeds directly into the next without a stop, and the knife never quite settles. That is where a knife’s weight distribution stops being a number and starts being the thing that decides whether a sequence flows or stutters.

At 180 grams on a 24cm frame with brass carrying most of the mass, this one has enough momentum to keep a chain rolling without you re-injecting force at every handoff. That is the specific job it does well.

Patina is not damage, and we are tired of the confusion

This is a high carbon blade, so it will change colour. Every high carbon knife does, and the internet has managed to convince a lot of people that this is a fault.

There are two different things happening and they get called the same word.

A blade that has been used and wiped down goes grey. A blade that was put away damp goes orange. The action that separates those two outcomes is drying the blade, which takes about eight seconds.

The upshot is that a Millipede two years into daily handling does not look like the one in the photograph, and that is the point. It is the only knife material we sell that keeps a record of having been used.

Where high carbon butterfly knife steel actually loses to D2

We make both and we sell both, so there is no reason to be cagey about it.

• Edge retention. D2 holds an edge several times longer. This is not close.
• Corrosion. D2’s chromium content means it shrugs off the damp conditions that spot high carbon.
• Neglect tolerance. A D2 knife forgotten in a drawer for a year is fine. This one may not be.

And where it wins:

• Peak sharpness. Finer grain, finer apex. High carbon is the sharpest thing we sell.
• Sharpening. Any stone, a few minutes. D2 wants a diamond plate and takes its time about it.
• Character. Not a spec, but the patina is real and D2 will never give you one.

One thing appears on neither list: hardness. Both steels leave here at 58-60 HRC, so nothing above comes from one blade being harder than the other. All of it comes from what is in the steel.

Buy on that basis rather than on which sounds more impressive in a product title.

The kamagong balisong handle

Brass frame with kamagong wood inserts. Kamagong is Philippine ironwood, dense, tight-grained, and stable enough that humidity does not shift the tolerances around the pivot. Brass supplies the mass and darkens with handling, so the frame ages alongside the blade rather than staying showroom-fresh while the steel moves on without it.

Trainer, shipping and the rest of it on this high carbon balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife at the same price. Grinding the edge is one operation out of many and skipping it does not make the build cheaper, so we do not pretend it does. If you are learning chained sequences, the trainer is not a lesser purchase, it is the correct one, because chains are exactly where the blade passes your fingers repeatedly.

A fitted leather sheath is in the box. Given the argument two sections up, use it for carrying and not for keeping, since a closed sheath is a small damp room and patina is only the good outcome when the blade goes in dry.

US shipping is free. Everywhere else is a flat $49 for the whole order. Knife law is local and changeable, so check what applies at your address before you buy rather than after the parcel is in transit.