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Microtech Tachyon
A tachyon is a particle that travels faster than light, which physicists consider hypothetical and balisong flippers consider a design brief. The Microtech Tachyon is the company's butterfly knife, a line running from the original Tachyon of 2000 through the Tachyon II of 2012 to the Tachyon III, the 2015 re-engineering that most of the balisong world still measures production flippers against.
It is machined in the USA with the same obsession as the rest of the Microtech lineup, which is exactly why examples on this page rarely stay long.
Tachyon III Flipping Hardware
The handles are channel construction, milled from single billets of aluminum, so there is no liner flex and nothing to loosen. The pivots ride a ceramic ball bearing race with Viton O-rings for load dampening and heat-treated stainless retainer plates underneath, an assembly that eliminates handle play while letting the knife rotate almost frictionlessly. A spring latch keeps it closed, and the spring pocket clip solves the problem balisongs have carried forever: how to clip a knife you also need to spin freely.
The Tachyon III Blade in Elmax
The 4.5-inch clip point bowie wears a traditional Marfione fuller and a bayonet-style swedge, ground from Elmax, the same powder steel Microtech runs in its world-class automatics; our comparison of every major knife steel shows why that is a serious choice for a knife that gets dropped for a living. The model exists in sharp and blunt trainer forms, the trainer wearing an unsharpened swedge-ground tip so new flippers can learn without donating fingertips.
Why Flippers Rate the Tachyon III
Production balisongs with custom-grade hardware are rare, and American-made ones rarer still. With production runs long gone from most retailers, the Tachyon III now moves like a collectible: what lands on this page is what exists, and titanium-handled versions live at the very top of the Marfione Custom tier. If one is here and you have wanted one, that is the whole decision.
