Parrot D2 Tool Steel Original Filipino Balisong butterfly Knife BF-93

The BF-93 Parrot is a 24cm Filipino balisong with a 12cm D2 tool steel blade, brass handles with kamagong wood inserts, 180 grams. It is the most expensive 24cm knife in this run, and this page is going to be straightforward with you about why that is a strange thing for it to be. Trainer version at the same price above Add to Cart.

Same frame as our cheapest knife, forty dollars more

Here is the comparison nobody selling this knife would normally put on its own product page.

On the specification sheet, the cheaper knife arguably has more going on. That is not a typo and we are not going to invent an engineering reason for the difference.

So the useful advice, first, before anything else: if the specification is what you are buying, buy the Pangolin and keep the forty dollars. It is the same steel, the same size, the same weight, from the same bench. Nothing on this page is going to change that arithmetic.

What you are actually paying for here

These are handmade knives, which means the price of an individual model reflects the work that went into that model rather than a formula applied to a parts list. Fit, finish, and the time spent on the handle are not line items you can read off a spec table, which is exactly why spec tables are a poor way to choose between two knives from the same maker.

Some people can feel that difference in the hand and consider it worth paying for. Some people cannot, or can and do not care. Both positions are reasonable, and we are not going to write a paragraph implying that the second group lacks discernment.

What we will say is that the price is not there because the word “premium” got attached to this listing. Every knife on this site is made the same way, in the same place, from the same stock.

Kamagong on its own as a balisong handle

This handle is kamagong and brass, with nothing else in it. That simplicity is worth something in itself.

Kamagong is Philippine ironwood: dense enough to sink in water, tight-grained, and hard enough to be genuinely unpleasant to machine. On a balisong its important property is that it does not move. Humidity swings that would swell an open-grained timber, and heat that would check horn, do not shift kamagong enough to change the tolerances around the pivot. The knife you set up today still feels the same in ten years.

It also gives you a warm contact surface, which matters more than it sounds like it should after twenty minutes of practice with a brass-framed knife. Bare metal is cold and gets slippery as your hands warm up.

The brass will darken with handling. Every brass knife does. That is patina, not damage, and polishing it back only restarts a clock that is going to run anyway.

The name, since we brought it up

A parrot is loud and brightly coloured, and this is a plain wood and brass knife. The name does not describe the object and we are not going to pretend it does.

The animal series runs across the whole range and the names are labels, not claims. Anyone telling you their knife embodies the spirit of an animal is selling you a story with a knife attached to it.

D2 steel on a butterfly knife, in short

High-carbon, high-chromium tool steel near 60 HRC. It holds an edge several times longer than the high carbon knives in this series and resists corrosion much better. It is difficult to sharpen and wants diamond abrasive rather than ceramic, and it will not take quite as fine an edge as high carbon does.

Buy high carbon if sharpening is a hobby. Buy D2 if it is an errand.

Ordering this D2 balisong

Unsharpened trainer at the same price, chosen above Add to Cart. Same steel, same weight, no edge, and the same price because grinding an edge is one operation in a long build.

A fitted leather sheath is included, the same one the Pangolin ships with. It is not part of the forty dollars between the two knives.

US shipping is free. Flat $49 to anywhere else, whatever the order size. Check your local knife law before you order.

the D2 comes out of the quench at 58-60 HRC. Harder than that and it chips; softer and you are sharpening it every fortnight.