High Carbon Steel Filipino Balisongs Butterfly Stainless Steel with Walnut Burl Wood Inserts Black Mamba Knives World Class Knives | BMK-565

Description

The handles on this one are banded rather than solid: alternating segments of deep red-brown rosewood and pale cream bone, divided by brass pins and capped at each end with polished steel bolsters. The blade is a long upswept trailing point in satin, and the whole knife weighs about a hundred and seventy-five grams, which is the number most people actually want to know.

What that weight does

Mass in a balisong is not simply good or bad, it is a preference you discover by flipping. Heavier knives carry through a chained sequence without stalling and are harder to snatch out of position by accident; lighter knives change direction faster and punish a lazy wrist less. This sits in the middle of the range we build, which is why it gets recommended to people who have handled a friend’s knife exactly once and have no idea yet which camp they are in. Handles that run a little past the tip put a margin of steel between a mistimed catch and your knuckles, which is the whole reason the proportion is set the way it is.

Two materials in one handle, and they do not agree

Rosewood responds to humidity. Bone essentially does not. Give it two winters of dry indoor heat and your fingertip might just find a hair of a step where a timber segment meets its brass surround, while the bone beside it sits precisely where it began. This is normal, it does not touch the pivots or how the handles close, and a light oiling of the timber keeps the movement too small to see. The pale segments will meanwhile drift toward cream and then toward honey at the points your fingers cover most, because bone is porous and porous materials keep a record.

Inserts in a steel frame, not a wooden handle

The distinction carries practical weight. Steel bolsters take the impact and hold the geometry; the organic segments only have to look good and feel right. If a panel shrinks slightly in a dry winter you get a hairline at the edge of a channel rather than a loose handle. The trade-off is grip. Sanded and finished wood and bone are slicker than textured horn or stag, noticeably so with wet hands, and you should adjust what you attempt accordingly.

Two materials, two routines

Oil the steel and leave the organics alone unless they genuinely look dry. Most of the damage we see on inserts comes from over-treatment rather than from neglect: people flood a panel with something heavy, it sits in the grain, and the finish goes patchy. The care routine for layered blades is short and covers everything the steel needs. If you like this handle but want a tool steel blade under it, there is the D2 equivalent, and the steel comparison spells out exactly what changes when you swap.

Built in Tennessee

Profiled, hardened, fitted, pinned, sanded, sharpened and function-tested by hand in our Memphis shop, then shipped alongside a riveted black leather carrier. Please look into how your state treats this pattern of knife before buying. Our guarantee has no expiry date.

Model: BMK-441