Monkey Handmade D2 Tool Steel Original Filipino Balisong Butterfly Knife with Stainless Steel and Kamagong Wood Handle | 29cm Full Size Collector Gift | BF-83

The BF-83 Monkey is a 29cm Filipino balisong with a 14cm D2 tool steel blade, but unlike the rest of our full-size knives its handles are stainless steel rather than brass, set with kamagong wood. It is for someone who wants the traditional full-size frame in a lighter, cooler-running, lower-maintenance package. Trainer version at the same price above Add to Cart.

The handle metal changes more than people expect

Everyone shopping for a balisong reads the blade steel carefully and skims past the handle material as though it were trim. On a knife you spend hours rotating around your fingers, the handle is doing at least as much to determine how the thing feels.

This is the only full-size knife in this run with stainless steel handles instead of brass, and it is a genuinely different object as a result. Twenty grams lighter, harder-wearing at the contact points, and it will not develop the darkened patina that every brass knife eventually does.

Whether that is an upgrade depends entirely on whether you like patina. Plenty of people do not, and they have historically been stuck buying brass anyway.

Brass and stainless, side by side

Twenty grams sounds trivial written down. Across a 29cm arc it is not, particularly at the end of a long practice session when your forearm has an opinion.

Two hundred grams on a full-size D2 balisong frame

This is the lightest of our 29cm knives, which makes it the most approachable of them without giving up the traditional veinte y nueve dimension.

You still get the long, deliberate rotation that a full-size balisong gives you and that shorter 24cm frames simply cannot. You get slightly less carried momentum, so your wrist contributes a little more, and in exchange a mis-timed movement arrives with less force behind it.

If you have wanted a 29cm knife but found 220 grams heavier than you enjoyed, this is the specific knife that problem was waiting for.

A knife with nothing on it that corrodes

Worth pointing out because it is unusual in the range: D2 blade, stainless handles, kamagong inserts. There is nothing in that list that is going to spot, tarnish, or want oiling.

D2 is a high-carbon, high-chromium tool steel at roughly 60 HRC. The chromium is what buys the corrosion resistance, and it also holds an edge several times longer than the high carbon knives we make. Stainless handles obviously bring their own resistance, and kamagong is dense enough to ignore humidity that would move a lesser wood.

If you live somewhere damp, work with your hands, or have simply had enough of wiping down a blade every evening, this is the low-attention knife in the range.

The catch, because there is always one

D2 fights you when you sharpen it. Not a little: ceramic stones make embarrassingly slow progress and you will conclude something is wrong with your technique when in fact the steel is just hard. Buy a diamond plate and the problem disappears.

You will also reach a finer edge on our high carbon knives than you will ever reach on this one. High carbon has a finer grain and takes a keener apex, and it comes back on any stone in minutes. That is a real advantage and it belongs to the other steel.

The honest version is this. High carbon is the enthusiast’s steel: sharper, faster to maintain, needier. D2 is the owner’s steel: sharp enough for years, indifferent to weather, annoying on the rare occasions it needs work. Pick the description that sounds like you.

Trainer and shipping on this D2 balisong

The unsharpened trainer is the same knife with no edge, at the same price, selected above Add to Cart. It costs the same because grinding an edge is one operation among many and the rest of the build does not get any easier.

A fitted leather sheath comes with it. This is the one knife in the run you could leave sitting in that sheath without consequence, since there is nothing on it that corrodes, but it is still a habit worth not building if you own other knives.

Free US shipping. Flat $49 anywhere else, whatever the order contains. Balisong law varies by state and by country and it is on you to know yours before ordering.

the D2 is taken to 58-60 HRC, the same hardness we use across the whole shelf.