Sinauna Handmade Damascus Steel Balisong Double Edge Blade Knife| Mammoth Tooth & Brass Engraved Bolsters Handle | Premium Butterfly Knife with Leather Sheath BF-142

That deserves an explanation rather than an adjective, so here is exactly where the money goes.

Mammoth tooth

The handle panels are fossilised mammoth tooth. Not ivory, not bone, not resin. Tooth, from an animal that died somewhere between ten and forty thousand years ago and was preserved in permafrost until somebody dug it up.

Mammoth material is legal to trade precisely because the animal has been extinct for millennia, which is why serious makers use it instead of elephant ivory. There is no living animal anywhere in this supply chain.

What it looks like: bands of cream, tan and brown running in layers, because tooth grows in layers. Every panel is a cross section of something that grew slowly a very long time ago, and no two are remotely alike.

Why the material costs what it does

• The supply is finite and shrinking. Nothing is making more mammoths.
• Most of what is recovered is unusable. Cracked, crumbling or too degraded to cut.
• It is difficult to work. It can fracture along its growth layers if it is pushed, so it is cut slowly and stabilised carefully.
• Matching a pair is the hard part. Two panels that look like they belong together often means going through a lot of material that does not.

The rain drop Damascus blade

Rain drop is a specific Damascus pattern. Layers are forge welded and then dimpled from the surface before the billet is ground flat, so the grinding cuts through the layers in concentric rings. The result is rows of circles like rain landing on water. It is not etched on afterwards. The circles are structural, which is why sharpening never removes them.

Getting the dimples evenly spaced and evenly deep by hand is the difficult part, and it is the difference between a rain drop pattern that looks intentional and one that looks like a mistake.

As a cutting tool, no. Damascus at 58-60 HRC performs like good tool steel because that is what it is.

As an object, that is a different question and only you can answer it. You are buying a fossil, a forge pattern that took a day to get right, and engraved brass bolsters cut by hand. If those things are worth money to you, this is fairly priced. If they are not, buy the drop point and spend the difference on something else. We genuinely do not mind which.

Looking after a mammoth tooth balisong handle

Keep the mammoth panels out of prolonged damp and away from direct heat. Fossil material is stable but it does not enjoy being cycled between wet and bone dry. A wipe of mineral oil once a year is plenty. Keep it in the sheath.

Specifications for this Damascus double edge butterfly knife

What you actually receive with this Damascus balisong

A knife that has been sharpened, tuned and checked by hand, a leather sheath cut for this frame, and a gift box.

Or take it as a trainer instead: identical frame and weight, no cutting edge, and the price does not move. Use it for anything you have not done a hundred times.

Engraving is $19 for initials or short text and $29 for a custom logo, chosen on this page. Shipping is free inside the United States and a flat $49 to everywhere else.

Fossilised mammoth tooth is legal to work precisely because the animal has been extinct for millennia, and how it compares with the other exotic handle materials we use is in our handle materials guide. The Sinauna sits in the Damascus steel knife collection. Its rain drop pattern and brass bolsters are echoed in the Kalaw, built the same way with stag in place of mammoth tooth.

Buying for groomsmen? This balisong also comes as a matched set of 6, 15% less than buying six singly, and each one can carry its own engraved name.