Your butter knife will still be just fine during the alkaline stage of an extraction. There's no need to get any sulfuric acid anywhere near it. Stainless steel or (borosilicate) glass implements would be preferable - or magnetic stirring with a teflon stirbar ofc - if you found you needed to stir the acid salting stage and were using sulfuric or hydrochloric rather than any of the weaker, organic acids. The main thing is to use proper laboratory glass when diluting sulfuric acid.
It always bears repeating that
the acid should be added to the water and not the other way round!!
Some people even have reported success with using carbonated water as the acidic phase to extract the mescaline back out of the NPS so it's possible to make a cactus extraction fairly non-hazardous if that's what you'd prefer. Sulfuric acid is used because mescaline sulfate forms good, stable, anhydrous crystals which help to ensure accurate dosing.
“There is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work."
― Jacques Bergier, quoting Fulcanelli