Discovering a hobby: Butterfly knife (balisong) tricks

Most of you probably know of butterfly knives, also called balisong.

You've most likely seen some bad guy flipping them around in some 80's movie.

When I first laid my hands on one friend's knife many years ago, he quickly showed me the most common trick for opening it which I spent the afternoon trying to master.
Next time I saw him, I was the one showing how to do the dozen or so tricks I had learned or invented.

There is a huge online community dedicated to the love of those particular knives, and the many flashy tricks you can use to open, close, or just juggle them.

Flipping balisong is an impressive, not that hard, and only moderately dangerous hobby (well, it at least depends on you how much risk you're willing to take in learning any given trick).

In this article I will give you some leads on how to get into this very accessible hobby, that will surely impress your friends.

Getting started

Balisong flipping is a pretty accessible hobby. Provided you live in a place those knives aren't straight out banned, you should be able to buy them in many shops,markets or online once you're an adult. Don't forget to check your local laws, as possesion/carrying laws vary wildly across countries.

To get started, you don't need anything more than a CCC (Cheap Chinese Crap) knife.
You can get those in the 10-15€ range, and that's the easiest way to recognize them.
They tend to degrade pretty quickly if you do intense practice, or get into the most advanced tricks, but by that time, you will know if that hoby fits you or not. It doesn't really matter if you break them,I personnaly went through a lot of those cheap knives over the years.

Choosing a first knife

For your first knife, you should probably go with the most basic and iconic "marbled skeleton handle" type knife.

You can usually found those for under 10€ online, and they come in many different colors.
Resist the urge to buy any cool looking knife just yet as there are several caveats you should be on the lookout for when picking your training knife:

- Cool looking knives are often more fragile and prone to breaking or degrading.
- Those basic knives aren't usually very sharp, which is a good point for your fingers once you get into the most advanced tricks.
- Those basic knives feature a relatively comfortable handle.After hours of practice, the slightest irregularity or sharp corner on a handle will start to hurt.
- They are always the same, so you can easily develop a feel for their weight and not get lost when you break them and buy another. Also, having such "standardized" knives helps a lot when you get into two hands tricks.
- You should probably avoid square edged handles, multipart handles, and screw held handles. All of those are prone to breaking even earlier, or hurt your hands.

If you choose to go your own way, here is at least one thing you should know when choosing your first knife.
If you look at a balisong knife anatomy, you'll notice one of the handles always features a small latch that is used to keep the knife open/closed.

When opened, the vast majority of knives have that latch on the same side as the blade (leftmost knife on the picture below). This is what you should buy, as this is the most common configuration, and that many of the simplest tricks rely on that configuration to remain safe.
Having a knife of the rightside type will get you confused, and maybe hurt in your early attempts.

Why this matters, is because one of the handles of a balisong knife is always refereed to as the "safe handle". It is the one on the same side as the blade back when you hold the knife open. It's called that way, because for the simplest tricks, you can't really get hurt when holding the knife by this handle.

If you hold the other one, there are configuration where the blade could snap shut on your fingers.

So keep that point in mind when shopping for your first toy.

If you can't/don't want to buy an actual knife, there are also practice alternatives: practice knives with blunt edges, butterfly combs or butterfly bottle openers and such...

But those are usually either more expensive or lesser quality, so unless you can't legally own a real butterfly knife, you probably should just buy the cheap Chinese marbled handle version for now.

You'll probably prefer sticking to cheap versions even further down the way, when you own beautiful expensive knives, as intense practice is really tough on them.

 

Regarding safety

So, you got your first knife, it has the latch on the good side, and you know which is the safe handle.
Let's learn some tricks.

The first one is not actually a trick but more of a tip.
For your first practice runs (or later when moving onto more advanced tricks) you should probably put a piece of tape lengthwise on the blade.

Don't overdo it, a single piece is all it takes to make the blade safe(r), adding more will most likely jam the blade in the handles and get into the way. With that safety in place, you should be safe from any accidental slicing (stabbing is still possible though, but it shouldn't happen that soon with the basic tricks).
Might not look especially bad ass that way, but your fingers will thank me for this at some point.

So what are the actual risks of balisong flipping ?
- Some of the tricks, especially the easiest ones, are inherently "safe". If you hold the knife by the safe handle, there's virtually no risk of cutting yourself.
- More advanced tricks require you to hold the knife by the "biting handle" those are not fool proof but should be safe enough if you take your time learning them.
- The most advanced tricks, involving changing grips, holding by the biting handle, and even throwing the knife into the air present the most risks.You will most likely get cut or stabbed at some point practising those, or getting overconfident.
- Overall, using the tape trick should keep you safe from cuts up to the harder levels, but if you're not using it, expect to get cut often as you get into more advanced tricks.

I won't bullshit you with disclaimers,safety measures or serious injury warnings. I trust you not to be dumb.Do as you see fit, then face the eventual consequences.

Learning the easy tricks

So, now you're ready to learn some basic tricks.
The simplest and single most widely known, I've already mentioned.
It's a safe trick, and you can't really hurt yourself practising it as long as you have an opposable thumb and basic motor skills.

Once you get the feel for it, you can try doing it faster and smoother.It will help you develop a feeling for the knife behaviour.

You can then move to some other relatively basic tricks
- The badass and blitz-quick latch drop (warning, slight risk of stabbing your palm)
- The reverse grip basic opening
- The bite handle opening, for the times when you grab the knife by the bit handle and still want to open it without switching grips first.( Be careful, being held from the bite handle, this one is not foolproof, there is a chance of you getting bitten if you're not careful)

Going further

If you and your fingers are still there, you might want to try some more badass (and dangerous) tricks:

Starting throwing and catching your knife will probably mark the most significant, badass (and bloody) step in your progression

References

So, you've mastered the basic tricks and feel the hobby might be for you ? here are some additional links and references to keep you going.

 - http://balisong-xtreme.com/ is the historic site with the oldest and earliest traces of balisong tutorials, and is also a good source to learn the names of the various techniques. They are neatly classified by difficulty, so you should easily find anything to suit your taste there.
- Youtube user BalisongAddict also has a lot of video tutorials.User BiteHandle also has a couple clips and other inspiration for cool hobbies.
- Other sites have some various tutorials
- The obvious enthusiast nest on reddit.

In those days of abundant Internet resources and cheap slow mo cameras, you're only a quick googling away from finding more tutorials, compilations and freestyles.
Youtube is probably the most easily accessible and abundant source of well made teaching material or impressive combos.

If you're interested in getting the fancy, expensive knives for your collection, Benchmade brand ones are probably the direction you should be looking at.


Hope you enjoyed discovering that new hobby! We'll discover more similar,totally different, less, or more dangerous hobbies in the next posts.