High Carbon Steel Filipino Balisongs Butterfly Stainless Steel with RAM Horn Inserts Black Mamba Knives World Class Knives | BMK-440

Description

Ram horn inserts, dark and faintly striped, set between stainless bolsters on a nine inch butterfly frame.

Owner profile: the collector who buys for the handle. Ram horn is the reason this one exists, and every piece comes out of the shop with a different pattern of grain and color running through it.

Horn is a natural material with natural habits

Ram horn is keratin, the same family as fingernail, pressed and set hard. It is tougher than bone against impact because it gives slightly instead of cracking, which makes it a sensible choice on a knife that gets dropped while you learn. It is also alive to humidity. Left somewhere very dry it can shrink a little and lift at an edge, and left somewhere very damp it can swell. Neither is damage, and neither happens quickly. A cabinet indoors, away from a heat source, keeps it stable for decades. The color will deepen with handling, and the paler striping tends to go amber.

How it sits in the hand

Stainless bolsters put the weight at the two ends of each handle, so the knife pivots around a point close to your fingers and comes over easily. At 9.1 inches open with a 4.4 inch blade, this is the standard full size pattern rather than anything unusual, which means every trick tutorial written for a normal balisong applies directly. The blade is bright and unpatterned, with a plain clip point and a fine tip. If you want the same horn against a warmer, softer looking frame, the brass and ram horn balisong swaps the stainless for brass and gains a little weight doing it.

Care that actually matters

Two different jobs. The horn wants nothing but a dry cloth and, once or twice a year, a trace of wax buffed off. Oil soaks into horn and can darken it unevenly. The steel wants the opposite: a light film left on the pivots and the flats. Do not soak the knife, because water sitting in the channel is what corrodes a balisong from the inside. Names for the parts are in the knife anatomy guide, and the trick guide is worth reading before you start.

Questions

Will the horn match the photo? No, and it cannot. Each pair is cut from different stock.

Is the latch on the safe handle or the bite handle? On the safe handle, which is the conventional arrangement.

Can horn be repaired if it lifts? A lifted edge can be re-bedded in the shop. A crack across the grain generally cannot, so a replacement panel is the honest answer there.

Model: BMK-440