Necessecity is the fuel of progress - or somehting.

Here you go. You know I always though. one day I'm gonna make myself Jaguar handles and a bear damascus clip blade. As you have it - will all great ideas some great mind has though tof it before. Thus, I give you Master Clay of balisongxtreme.com.

For the most part, there are really only two readily available (and affordable) Balis on the market....... The BEAR and the JAGUAR.

The BEAR's have nice heavy Tanto blades that I like, but the handles are slim and light. A terrible combination, in my opinion. On the other hand I do like the way the handles attach to the blade. The Pivot pins are spaced wide apart as compared to the JAG. This makes things MUCH easier on the Tang pin when opening (less pressure). The Butt of the handles absorbs a good amount of the force out of slamming open. That's good.

The JAGs on the other hand have thicker, heavier handles............. which I like. The Pivot pins are much closer which adds some heavy pressure to the Tang pin, and usually results in handle damage. Not good. As for the blades, they're OK but I want something a little different darn it!

So, after sifting through my ever growing pile of broken Balis, I found the parts I needed to combine the best of the BEAR and JAG into one hopefully workable Franken-Bali.

Surprisingly, everything went pretty smooth. Handles are about the same size, although the BEAR blade was a little thinner than the slots in the JAG handles. Nothing a little vise action couldn't fix. What I didn't have though, was a spare Latch. I hate latchless Bali's. This WILL be fixed!.......... sooner or later.

Even more surprising is the way it looks and handles. Looking at the profile of it closed, the outside edges of the handles form perfect parallel lines, unlike the Butt to Tang taper of the stock closed JAGUAR. I don't know about you, but I like the look. Open it up and what do you see?? The same parallel lines extending across the blade profile. It's a very Rectangular looking piece.......open and closed. How cool is that!

The true beauty though is in the handling. The heavier JAG handles tame that Blade heavy feeling you get from the stock BEAR Balis. Beautiful......... tight, rock solid, and very controllable. And aerials are a breeze. I think I'm going to have to make a few more of these.

By the way, The pins were done using the BalisongXtreme Tip of the Week method. Learn it, live it, and create Franken-Balis.