Description
Long handles change what your hand does
5.9 inches is a lot of handle to hold, and it alters the geometry of everything you do with the DB-11. A full four-finger grip leaves room to spare, which is comfortable across a long session and stops the cramping that shorter frames cause. It also puts the pinch point that most aerial work depends on further from the pivots than a compact knife does, so your rolls come out wide and unhurried whether or not that was the plan. For anyone with large hands who has found smaller balisongs cramped and fiddly, this is the geometry that stops fighting back.
| Overall length | 11.4 inches |
| Blade length | 5.5 inches |
| Handle length | 5.9 inches |
| Steel | 1095 + 15N20 Damascus, 352 layers |
| Hardness | 58–60 HRC, oil tempered |
| Weight | 7.2 oz |
| Handle | Damascus Balisong Butterfly Knife with handmade steel and wooden handle |
Steel bolsters, timber between them
The bolsters at each end of the handles are polished steel rather than brass, which keeps the colour of the knife cool and even from tip to butt. The timber running between them is dark and close-grained, pinned rather than glued, and set flush with the metal so nothing catches your palm during a rollover.
Wood and weather
Timber moves with humidity. Steel does not. Over a few years a wooden handle can sit a hair proud or a hair shy of the metal around it as the seasons turn, and it can go back the other way again in spring. That is normal behaviour for the material rather than a defect, and it is not something to sand out, because sanding it flat in August guarantees a gap in January. What does cause real damage is heat: a car dashboard in July, a radiator, a sunny windowsill all week long. Keep it away from those and the handle will outlast you.
Where the money goes at this price
At 7.2 ounces and 11.4 inches you are paying for forge time and hand fitting rather than for machine tolerances. Expect the action to be good and to improve with use, not to feel like a bearing-equipped production flipper straight out of the box. Pinned balisongs settle. The first month loosens things slightly and then they stay where they land. The steel reference puts this laminate in context against the alloys you will have seen elsewhere, and the rust question answers the one thing almost every new owner asks within a fortnight.
The dressier build at the same length
If you want this overall size in warmer trim, rose wood with brass bolsters is the same footprint in a more formal finish and can be personalised before it ships. Everything here is forged, ground, etched and put together in Memphis, Tennessee, then flipped on the bench before it is boxed. Whether you can legally own one depends entirely on where you live, so look into that first.
Model: BMK-DB-11
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