Damascus Balisong Butterfly Knife with Beautiful Brass and Bull Horn Handle Handmade Original Traditional Filipino Butterfly Batanga Knife Black Mamba Knives USA | DB-27

Description

Eighty dollars is the interesting number on this listing. The DB-27 is a compact Filipino-pattern balisong with bull horn panels, brass channels and a hand-forged laminated blade, made in Memphis, priced where most of this hobby sells you stamped aluminum. What follows is an honest account of how that is possible and what you are actually getting.

Bull horn at the price of a trainer

Eighty dollars buys mostly injection-molded aluminum elsewhere in this hobby. What you get here instead is bull horn set against brass, wrapped around a 352-layer forged billet. The horn is the reason the price surprises people: it is a byproduct material, cheap to source and slow to work, and the labor is where the value sits rather than in the raw stock.

What bull horn does that plastic will not

Bull horn is compressed keratin, so it reads dark brown to near-black with paler striations running lengthwise through each panel. No two panels match, and the streaking on yours will not be the streaking in the photograph. Keratin takes on moisture slowly and gives it back slowly. In a dry winter house the panels can shrink a fraction against the brass and you may feel a faint lip at the pin line; leave the knife somewhere less arid for a week and it usually settles back level. Wiping the horn with a suitable oil once a season stops it going chalky.

The 6.2-inch frame

Six ounces on a 6.2-inch overall length makes this one of the denser short balisongs we build. Handles are 3.1 inches, the same as the blade, so the knife closes flush and stows small, but there is not much handle left beyond your fist. Aerials feel cramped if your hands are large. Basic openings and rollovers feel quick, because the mass sits close to the pivots rather than out at the ends. If you want the same footprint with more swing weight, the rose wood version of this frame runs half an ounce heavier.

The blade itself

1095 gives the billet its hardness and 15N20 gives it the bright lines, and the two of them welded and drawn together are what the etch later separates into light and dark. Hardened in oil to the high fifties, the edge takes a fine polish and gives it back sooner than stainless would, which is the standing bargain with any carbon steel. Nothing about the layer count makes it cut better. It makes it look like itself, which on a knife bought to be flipped and admired is a fair reason to want it.

Care, in one paragraph

Wipe the flats after handling, especially in summer, because fingerprints etch into unprotected carbon steel faster than people expect. A thin film of any decent protective oil left on the blade is enough. Do not run polish or an abrasive cloth over the etched surface, since the pattern is shallow relief and polishing flattens it permanently. Brass can be left to dull or brightened with a rag, entirely as you prefer.

Where it comes from

Forged, ground, heat treated, fitted and sharpened by our own bench in Tennessee, then packed in a protective box and shipped with a lifetime warranty. It is a collector and hobby piece in the traditional Filipino idiom, not a tool we would send anyone out to work with. Ownership rules for this style of knife vary widely by state and country, so confirm yours first.

Model: BMK-DB-27