New Gear Drop: The KA-BAR Becker BK25C Outpost Is a Full-Size Fighting Bowie From the Guy Who Designed the BK2
Ethan Becker’s name on a KA-BAR shows up on well over a dozen knives, but the one that actually built his reputation is the BK2 Companion — the fixed blade half the survival-knife category still gets measured against. His latest, the Becker BK25C Outpost, isn’t another Companion-sized camp knife. It’s a full-size fighting Bowie, built through KA-BAR’s small-batch State & Union shop, and it’s not trying to fit in a pocket at all.
The Real Numbers
- Steel: CPM 3V, modified Bowie-profile blade
- Blade length: 6.125″
- Overall length: 10.918″
- Weight: 8.8 oz
- Handle: G10, roughly 4.8″
- Sheath: USA-made Kydex, with an Ulticlip
- Price: $300, in stock now, direct from KA-BAR only
Same Guy, Much Bigger Knife
The BK2 Companion earned its reputation by doing the unglamorous stuff well — batoning kindling, field dressing, the daily abuse a camp knife actually takes. The Outpost is Becker working at the other end of the size range: a genuine fighting Bowie, not a general-purpose bushcraft blade. CPM 3V is the upgrade that matters here — it’s a premium toughness steel, built to take repeated hard impacts without chipping, which is exactly the demand a blade this size is designed for.
Small-Batch, On Purpose
The Outpost comes out of KA-BAR’s State & Union shop, its small-batch line for runs that don’t fit the mainline catalog. Gear Patrol traced the blade’s lineage back to the Bowie’s origins in the 1827 Sandbar Fight — not a marketing flourish, just the honest lineage of the shape. KA-BAR’s own product page is blunt about the scale of this run: it’s a small production batch, sold only at KA-BAR.com. We checked — there’s no Amazon listing for this one, and multiple outlets covering the release (Gear Patrol, Skillset Mag, Knife Magazine) all point buyers back to the same direct listing. That’s not an oversight; it’s the actual distribution plan for this run.
The Catch
Worth saying plainly: at $300, this is priced like the serious tool it is, not an impulse buy. KA-BAR’s Elishewitz Pocket Tool we covered last month runs $77.68 direct and shows up cheaper on the used/secondary market as it circulates — this one won’t. Because it’s small-batch and direct-only, $300 is the only price that exists for it right now. There’s no Amazon undercut to wait for, and no guarantee this run gets repeated once it sells out. If you’re shopping for a pocket EDC fixed blade, this isn’t it — the Outpost rides a belt, not a pocket, and it’s built for a different job entirely.
The Take
This isn’t for everyone on this site, and it shouldn’t try to be. If you already know you want a full-size fighting Bowie with real design pedigree behind it — not a mall-ninja version of one — the combination of Ethan Becker’s name, CPM 3V steel, and a genuinely limited production run makes $300 a defensible price rather than an inflated one. If you’re after everyday pocket carry, look at the EPT instead. This one’s for the belt, and for buyers who’ve already decided that’s what they want.
