I "customized" my Sebenza

Z

Zasky

Joined
May 16, 2015
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17
My new small Insingo has been getting all my after-work and weekend pocket time—a drop-dead gorgeous snakewood Mnandi rides with me during office hours—and now that I know I’ll keep it forever I decided to tweak it a bit. Nothing radical, just a few small adjustments to personalize this nearly perfect piece of craftsmanship.

I liked but didn’t love the blue anodizing. To me, one of the attractions of the plain jane Sebenza is how brutally simple and stripped down it is. Everything that needs to be on the knife, is. Anything that doesn’t, isn’t. Whenever folks come on this forum and complain Sebenzas are boring grey lumps that don’t have the wow factor of a Hinderer or ZT, I’m reminded how glad I am for that--that they aren’t all tarted up and straining for attention. So off came the blue on the thumb lug, back spacer, and lanyard post to quiet down my Insingo that last little bit.



The thumb lug was too pointy for me. I don’t press on it to open the knife, but even so it still dug into my flesh. So I took down the peak just a tad and rounded it off. Ahhh, much better. Only the most hardcore CRK aficionado would notice the difference, but my grateful thumb sure knows.




Finally, I swapped out the stock black lanyard for a chocolate-brown leather one. I’m not really a lanyard guy, but turns out I love using it to pull the knife out of my pocket. The leather—which like the Sebenza gets better as it wears and weathers—seemed like the natural complement.





Thanks for reading!
 
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Looks great!
I feel the same way, and swapped the blue hardware for silver on my small Insingo, as well.
 
Wow, that looks great. I've been looking at picking up my first sebenza, recently. Definitely one of my favorite things about the knife is how plain it looks. I really like the look of silver thumb stud, very unique.

Good work! :thumbup:
 
Great work. I also appreciate the simple but elegant design of the plain Seb. What method to remove the blue please...;-)
 
Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Kyle_4 and tuica, to remove the anodizing from the thumb lug I masked off the blade with blue painter’s tape and buffed the lug with an old t-shirt and a dab of Mother’s aluminum polish.



Came off very easily and left a beautiful shine. It takes a little finesse at the joint between the bottom of the lug and the blade, so go gently to avoid polishing the blade’s stone wash. The back spacer and lanyard post were even easier: I removed them first, which made buffing off the blue a cinch.
 
I like your modds. I've done everything you did to my large Insingo except the thumbstud and the leather lanyard. I don't use lanyards.

I think a PJ 21 or an Insingo looks better with all silver than with blue and silver.
 
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