A butterfly knife or balisong knife is one of the more complicated knife types. These knives are derived from Asia and are generally associated with dangerous activities. You may have seen these balisong knives or butterfly knives being used for tricks and fancy stunts. They are still dangerous and have sharp blades but are generally used for fun. They are awesome to play with once you’ve learned how to use butterfly knives. So what better than to learn how to make one that’s not dangerous.
How about if you could learn how to make a butterfly knife out of paper. This removes any dangerous elements involved but allows for a fun and enjoyable time. Using paper to make anything is a lot harder than it would be to use solid materials. But don’t let that deter you because we’ll show you how to do it.
Getting Started With Your Paper Butterfly Knife
What will you need? Of course, you’ll need paper but more than that, glue, and a sharp knife. If you’ve ever heard of the term origami this is what we’ll be using. Origami is a Japanese form of art using paper only.
- It is very satisfying to make things out of paper especially when they’re complicated like a butterfly knife. So go ahead and grab five pieces of A4 paper and fold them in half longways.
- Then grab your knife and cut the paper into two pieces at the fold line. Take the top sheet of paper and fold it in half again and then in half again. So now your paper should be folded into quarters.
- Now take the outside quarter and fold it in on each side. Then measure from the short edge 1 cm into the length. Fold long ways to the one-centimeter mark on each side.
- Then take the second sheet of paper and cut it into 4 pieces. Take one of the pieces and fold it in half 4 times. These will serve as the handles. Each of the four pieces will be connected to the other to make a square-shaped long handle piece.
- After they have been folded four times you can layer them into one another. Take the edge pieces and glue them onto another piece and fold it over the others to form a square shape.
- Repeat the process to form the other handle. Be careful to take your time to ensure that you get it right. The lovely thing with paper is that if you make a mistake you can just start again. So have a lot of paper handy for you to use. If you’re not happy with any of the pieces try again until you get it right.
How To Make A Paper Balisong
- The first piece of paper that we folded will be our blade. So we’re going to use this as the starting point. We’re going to take another piece of paper and fold it into quarters. Then cut it in half. We’ll then take this and poke holes into it.
- Take a toothpick and poke 2 holes. This will be the pivot point where the handles are connected to the blade. We are going to attach a second piece to the bottom of the blade.
- Now we’re going to use glue to attach this small piece onto the blade. Take some glue and attach it to the base. Next, we’re going to make holes in the handle pieces. One handle will be attached on top of the blade and one underneath.
- You should use small pieces of wood, either toothpicks or if you have something bigger that’s fine. This will be for the pivot point. Take your toothpick and push it through the handle piece and the blade hole. Then repeat the process for the bottom handle as well.
- So in the end, you should end up with one handle connected to the blade on top and one on the bottom. At this point, the knife might feel flimsy and might move around quite a lot so if you’re not happy then go ahead and redo some of the portions of the design.
- The smaller the holes the better. So when making the holes try to push through very lightly so that everything holds together well. The only problem is that we need the handles to move freely so not too tight.
- Now you can go ahead and place a smidgen of glue on the edge of the toothpick at the pivot point. This will be to prevent the handles from sliding off. If you intend to use the paper knife as practice for a real butterfly knife, then you should try to make it as accurate as possible. If it is not then when you get onto a real knife it will feel a whole lot different and you might not be able to work it properly.
Conclusion
To close we’ll offer a couple of handy tips. An important thing to note is that folding paper it’s not as easy as you think. You shouldn’t be folding corner to corner you should fold middle to middle. Then proceed to push down the middle part instead of the corner first.
This will help you to fold more accurately and for less of the papers to be misaligned. Remember this is just a paper model so you shouldn’t expect perfection. After folding you should push down on the folded section quite firmly to cement the fold for good. If it isn’t folded down hard enough then it will continue to shift out of place.
