Kabar • Becker BK16 Drop Point • Survival Knife Field Review

Description

Krik of Black Owl Outdoors reviews the Becker BK16 Drop point survival knife by Kabar. Designed by Ethan Becker for Kabar, the BK16 features 1095 coated steel with ergonomic zytel handles. While both the steel and the handles have benefits, the coating is too coarse and grippy while the handles, although ergonomic and comfortable, are slippery and leave something to be desired. One place the BK16 does shine is the sheath that comes with it. Constructed of Cordura Nylon, it is double stitched and feels rugged and reliable. The sheath also features a belt attachment, as well as Molle attachment capabilities. Another downside of the knife is the subpar edge it comes with from the factory. While the knife is by no means blunt, it is dull compared to many other knives at a similar price point. We want to like the knife, so we'll probably strip the coating, force a patina and redo the edge.. and maybe even some custom micarta handles to round it out. All in all the BK16 is durable, but for the price, you can find a knife that will perform much better straight out of the box.

Kabar - Becker BK16 - http://amzn.to/1QyXVaf

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Tags: black owl outdoors,nature,camping,hiking,backpacking,survival,bushcraft,wilderness,forest,KABAR,Becker,Ethan Becker,bk16,drop-point,drop point,knife,review

Video Transcription

soft turtles prick here the black outdoors and today I'm gonna be doing a review in a video on BR the ke baare Becker BK 16 drop point fixed blade knife it's a lot to say but here it is in a chief this retails for around nice for the retail you can find a line for around 70 80 bucks with the sheath included and poking out here of the sheath or the actual or the other color of scales that come with the knife as opposed to the black but I'll get you close-ups a little bit when I get the knife out but first I want to talk about the sheath and my first impressions of the sheath when I saw this was it's a quality definitely a quality sheath and getting into a little more details of it in the front here on the there's a little pocket that's held together by velcro and big enough for a sharping stone or various other survival outdoor accouterments down here of a little clip a little loop to help attach you to or things to also around here to go around obviously the thigh brand word on the hip holding the knife in it's not a friction sheet so we have these tube claps that have buttons quality and just the mean point I want to get across with the sheath is that everything feels pretty quality the stitching the kadoya I never feel like there's like weak stress points or the stress ports on the knife don't feel weak like when I unbutton this it's not going to feel like the buttons cheap or chintzy or it's going to come out or any of these ends are going to fray and the stichting stitching is going to come out which I have seen on knives that actually you know are pretty comparable in price to this the BK 16 you know some of those other knives are coming pretty you know frankly speaking crappy not crappy cheese but this is not one of them and it's attached to the body with the belt loop here but it could also be attached without unbuckling I guess your belt it has a velcro to be able to put on without taking your belt off which I always find is really not that easy it's

these are just when you take the belt off and thread it through as is closed and I'm not a huge fan of velcro which this is held together with velcro but there's a redundant system with the button here so maybe if the over time this gets worn debris gets in it you know whatever velcro is not going to last forever

um there's a button so it's a nice little extra feature in addition to the velcro which is strong so this is the sheath now let's get into tonight the camera gets a nice close-ups of them it's going to run down the specs real quick give you the numbers overall length nine and a quarter inches blade length four and three-eighths it's made out of 1095 Crowe van flat grind drop point pry get a little close up or you can see the drop point in the blade design of the tip moving down the scandals I'm sorry the scale is the handle this is like the tan I guess the coyote brown coyote brown color but black comes with it in these in addition to and just for a nice contrast at that car coyote tan on the knife overall weight 6.4 ounces so I really really like the style of this knife the proportions I think it looks like this the classic survival bushcraft type knife handle long enough to come out of my hand

very comfortable different different ways of holding knife in my hand the classic cut out in front of me more of a defensive style if you will and just thourgh anomic of the handle kinky almost get a profile you might be able to see the swoops in it as it's on this belly right here to go in the palm of your hand it's really comfortable the design of the handle one thing I'm going to say about the handles is I'm not sold on this I tell I guess texture it's a little smooth my liking I don't really think it mean you know quite might not be necessary to switch these out spend more money on the knife I think you can improve the knife in other ways which I'll talk about I think scales can stay for now okay another area of concern was I sort of just alluded to is that this knife that not come shaving razor sharp from the factory and that's kind of disappointing I've seen other fellows talking making the same comments that their blade was not coming shaving sharp which they expect from you know Becker and K bar but with a little bit of you know your own work you can either convex the blade if you so desired something you you on desire in a blade or you can just put it you know make a little bit sharper on your own moving over to this code the coding now the black coding it's very it's very coarse and rough and it almost feels like a little bit of we're over here with the void it feels like it's way too rough and it's going to promote a lot of drag when you're trying to go through wood and just for comparison I'm going to pull out the SD for just to give a size comparison because they're pretty similar knives that people you know know a lot about they've seen reviews on in the BK 16 longer handle pre your identical pretty much identical designed knives with proportions count a little bit longer handle I don't feel like it's increasing the functionality of the knife with the shorter handle on the se because where the contact meets is really you know there's really no need for any longer handle this comes out but it just looks cool and there's a little space for a lanyard but just robbing my fingers that you're not going to be able to tell on camera just feeling the different coatings on here this is so much coarser than the coating on the SE and this actually coating on this would be really great for the replace my pumice stone from the way I get from my boots on my toes and you know all joking aside I actually think this wood knife will perform better could take the coating off which is it's pretty easy to do yourself not a lot of resources you don't need a workshop to do it you we're going to spray it let it's a really highly corrosive you know chemical is to take strip to strip it off if you're into playing around with things that are horrible for the environment but with that being said I like the knife I'm going to do some cutting with it show you some of the some of the uses and tasks with it I just want to make clear that I really I'm not a fan of the coating I probably strip it off and the blades not as quite as sharp as it should be but a little bit of work you can pretty much improve this to a great quality knife with this a few extra things in it and you're really not going to put too much more money into it with that being said let's do some cutting now just to show some various various cutting with with the knife I'm going to go cross screen this branch I have here on this log and ideally you really never want to do this with a knife is you're on the cross screen it's kind of tough but I'm going to do anyways for the video let's work a little V into here probably should have got a little bit of heavier baton some weight to it but you can see it's going in like I said this is not sharp I haven't put a different edge on it I wanted to actually show you how this is going to perform at when it's coming out of the factory coming showing up to you on your doorstep I can see I'm banging on banging on this knife I don't feel like it's weak it's any no it's going to fail on me and got a little bit of a notch in there so seems very shocking all this round so you can see it so not a really typical use of this to cut through this assault would make make it much easier carry a little handsaw with you but let's give you a little demonstration of it next I'm going to put on a piece of wood just to show you is but honorable a knife this size really is not meant to do you know how to wood I'm sorry fire processing fire wood processing but it's capable because it's a full tang it's strong quality knife material like I said because of this rough coating I can really sort of feel the knife was bitin in you can see the wear or the particles of wood that are really showing up on the coating which it's not really going to compromise the coating so much protective quality but it's really going to feel like as increasing drag as it's going through pieces of wood but anyways I've got two nice pieces of beautiful hemlock here to burn or do anything with show a little bit of carving now I actually have it and you said feels really comfortable in the hand with the ergonomics of the scales and it just doesn't feel as sharp as it should for the price and the companies that are putting this knife out I feel like it should be a lot sharper this is birch but I do want to reiterate and make clear that this is a nice this is a quality knife with a few modifications to the coding and putting a sharper or different edge on this and I think this could be your definitely a favorite a knife I just really like to design the proportions of it like I said just to me it has that classic that woods bush knife to it look of it and it you know it's coming quality so still a little more cuts with it if I were doing a notch or something like that in a piece of wood I'd probably use this style of cut not really drawing it towards me like this because as we all know that's very dangerous bringing the knife towards your hands and we're just going down at an angle

should I keep contact with pieces of piece of wood okay anyways that concludes the testing portion of the video and just like to thank you for being here as Creek signing out of black outdoors later Turtles