Damascus Balisong Butterfly Knife Hunting Blade Beautiful Engraved Handle Original Traditional Filipino Butterfly Batanga Knife USA Made | BMK-2014

Description

This is the top of our Ultra Line balisongs, and the reason sits in the handle: matched scroll work cut by hand across brass and copper together, panel by panel, on an eight-inch frame carrying a forge-welded hunting blade. It is a display and collection piece in the traditional Filipino idiom, made in Memphis, and it is not a knife bought for utility.

Two metals that age at different speeds

Brass and copper sit side by side on this handle, and they will not stay the same color as each other. Copper darkens fast, in weeks rather than years, moving through salmon to a deep russet and then toward chocolate if you leave it alone. Brass takes far longer and goes gold-brown. So the contrast in the listing photographs is the loudest this knife will ever look. A year in, the two metals converge. Five years in, the copper is clearly the darker of the pair. Some owners bring both back to bright every spring. Others let it run. Neither is wrong, but decide early, because copper that has patinated deep into the engraved recesses loses that depth the first time it is polished out.

Why this is the dearest knife in the Ultra Line balisongs

$368 is the top of the range and the reason is bench hours, not material cost. Copper is soft and cuts fast under a graver, which sounds like a saving until you realize every slip also shows. Cutting matched scroll into copper and brass on one handle takes longer than cutting either metal alone, and there is no way to rescue a wandering line in copper. If the two-metal look appeals but the price does not, a simpler brass and copper build covers the same ground for less.

How it swings

7.23 ounces across 8 inches, with a 4.5-inch handle carrying a 3.5-inch blade, puts the balance behind the pivots and back toward your palm. Handle-heavy balisongs are forgiving on rollovers and sluggish on anything airborne. Learning, that trade favors you.

The blade under the ornament

It is easy to look past the steel on a knife this decorated, which would be a mistake. The billet is 1095 stacked with 15N20, forge welded and drawn out in our own shop, then ground into a belly-forward hunting profile, quenched in oil and drawn back to the high fifties. The etch afterwards is what separates the two alloys visually. The edge arrives keen and, being carbon steel rather than stainless, it will want drying and a wipe of oil rather than being put away wet.

Looking after engraved metal

The one habit worth forming is to keep abrasives away from the scroll. Polish wadding, metal creams and scouring cloths all work by removing material, and the fine cuts in this engraving are only a few thousandths deep. A soft dry cloth for the handle, a thin protective film on the steel, and nothing else. If you want the ornament to stay as sharp as the day it arrived, handle the knife by the flats and store it somewhere dry rather than sealed.

Where it is made

Forged, ground, engraved, fitted and finished under one roof in Tennessee, then boxed and shipped under a lifetime warranty. Rules covering this style of knife differ by state and by country, so please confirm what applies to you before ordering.

Model: BMK-2014