Handmade Damascus Steel Balisong Kitchen Chef Knife | Buffalo Bone Handle with Brass Bolsters and Leather Sheath BF-167

The BF-167 is a 12 inch Damascus balisong chef knife with buffalo bone panels and brass bolsters. We will make the same statement here that we make on every Damascus page on this site, because it does not stop being true in a kitchen.

Damascus does not cut better

It cuts like the tool steel it is made from, which is to say well. Two steels are forge welded into a billet, folded to multiply the layers, drawn out, ground and then etched so that acid eats the two alloys at different rates and raises the pattern in relief. The pattern runs through the full thickness, so sharpening will never remove it.

What the pattern does not do is improve edge retention, food release or toughness beyond what the constituent steels already give you. If a shop tells you their Damascus cuts better because of the layers, they are describing a knife nobody has ever made.

You are buying the pattern. It is a beautiful thing to buy and it costs real work to produce. That is a complete and sufficient reason.

Which is why the handle is bone

A Damascus flat is visually busy. Put something equally busy next to it and the eye has nowhere to settle, and the knife starts to look cheaper than it is.

Buffalo bone is close to uniform. Cream, with fine natural marbling and the occasional darker vein, and no strong grain direction pulling the eye anywhere. It gives the blade a quiet background to sit against. Brass bolsters do the rest, small warm elements that link the cream of the bone to the darker layers in the steel.

Bone in a kitchen, honestly

Bone is harder than horn and considerably harder than wood. It shrugs off knocks that would dent a walnut handle, and it does not soften with humidity.

Its weakness is thermal shock and long soaking. Do not run it under hot water straight from a cold drawer, and do not leave it in a sink. Bone that has been repeatedly soaked and dried can develop fine surface cracks along its natural channels, and once they are there they do not close. Rinse in warm water, dry it, put it away. That is all it asks.

It needs no oil. Unlike horn and unlike wood, bone is stable enough to be left entirely alone.

Brass and what it does over time

Brass darkens to a soft gold and eventually a warm brown. It will not corrode into anything that matters and it will not stain the bone next to it. If you like it bright, a metal polish on a cloth restores it in seconds, but the handle looks better after a year than it does on day one, so consider leaving it.

Specifications for this Damascus balisong chef knife

Ordering the BF-167

Sharpened, tuned and checked by hand, with a fitted leather sheath cut for this frame and a gift box. Keep it out of the sheath between uses, because leather holds moisture and an etched blade would rather it did not.

Laser engraving is $29, chosen on this page. Free shipping inside the United States, flat $49 worldwide.