- Joined
- Jun 17, 2010
- Messages
- 970
There's a running joke on these forums to new guys.... save your self the trouble and get a sebenza.
at first i too thought the price tag was astronomical and plain ridiculous, especially for something so plain, so simple. but its fans raved, and its nay sayers nay said. but the more i looked the more i liked it and i simply had to know what was going on.
i mean, on paper, there's nothing that sets it apart. s30v? $80 benchmades have that. HT'd to 58-59? seems kinda soft... Titanium Handles? cool sure, but again not particularly special. Framelock? pretty common. its design is plain at best, its blade not overly large. so i didn't understand.
yet something called me to buy one this spring. my tax return came in and i pulled the trigger on a large tanto sebenza from true north knives.
when it first arrived i was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. the quality was obvious and like nothing i'd ever seen. the blade didn't even think about wiggling, the space between spine and scale was minimal, the grind was perfectly symmetrical as were the edge bevels. from a manufacturing stand point; it was perfect.
yet in design and performance it definitely was not. i despised how the handle widened at the base. the steel was soft, fairly easy to sharpen, but also fairly easy to dull. the open back design loved to collect pocket change and chip the blade. it felt good in hand, but not $400 good. my 940 had fit me better. the thumb stud was sharp. the list goes on.
but i kept it because i admired and respected the quality of the knife. its simply amazing that a company can produce so many knives at such tight tolerances. rarely do you hear word of a bad sebenza from the factory. the design grew on me, kinda. still thought it was ugly but it had a nice kathunk when opened, cut well enough and boy did it feel nice in hand. not ergonomically, just in that moment when you open it and you think to yourself "man, thats impressive"
and that was my feeling of the knife until one day the ole sebbie started coming to work with me. and i mean work, manual labor tasks of varying types. sometimes it was just movin furniture and cutting tape. another time it was involved in cutting me out of the gordon's fisherman's suit when i was doing industrial cleaning at a paper plant. here lately its been at my side during my gig cleaning the student housing on a college campus
that sharp thumbstud? sure opens slick with a pair of gloves. those easily scratched scales? sure it looks bad with one or two, but mine seems like its darkened and i know patina is the wrong word, but thats what it seems like. the scratches blend together. that soft steel? sure it loses that razor edge like it was never there, but on a job site, anything will. and the seb keeps a workable edge all day through damn near anything, and when you get the inevitable chip, it doesn't take 4 hours to work out.
everything that i considered a flaw in the sebenza as an edc knife, i cherish in the sebenza as a hard work knife.
at first i too thought the price tag was astronomical and plain ridiculous, especially for something so plain, so simple. but its fans raved, and its nay sayers nay said. but the more i looked the more i liked it and i simply had to know what was going on.
i mean, on paper, there's nothing that sets it apart. s30v? $80 benchmades have that. HT'd to 58-59? seems kinda soft... Titanium Handles? cool sure, but again not particularly special. Framelock? pretty common. its design is plain at best, its blade not overly large. so i didn't understand.
yet something called me to buy one this spring. my tax return came in and i pulled the trigger on a large tanto sebenza from true north knives.
when it first arrived i was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. the quality was obvious and like nothing i'd ever seen. the blade didn't even think about wiggling, the space between spine and scale was minimal, the grind was perfectly symmetrical as were the edge bevels. from a manufacturing stand point; it was perfect.
yet in design and performance it definitely was not. i despised how the handle widened at the base. the steel was soft, fairly easy to sharpen, but also fairly easy to dull. the open back design loved to collect pocket change and chip the blade. it felt good in hand, but not $400 good. my 940 had fit me better. the thumb stud was sharp. the list goes on.
but i kept it because i admired and respected the quality of the knife. its simply amazing that a company can produce so many knives at such tight tolerances. rarely do you hear word of a bad sebenza from the factory. the design grew on me, kinda. still thought it was ugly but it had a nice kathunk when opened, cut well enough and boy did it feel nice in hand. not ergonomically, just in that moment when you open it and you think to yourself "man, thats impressive"
and that was my feeling of the knife until one day the ole sebbie started coming to work with me. and i mean work, manual labor tasks of varying types. sometimes it was just movin furniture and cutting tape. another time it was involved in cutting me out of the gordon's fisherman's suit when i was doing industrial cleaning at a paper plant. here lately its been at my side during my gig cleaning the student housing on a college campus
that sharp thumbstud? sure opens slick with a pair of gloves. those easily scratched scales? sure it looks bad with one or two, but mine seems like its darkened and i know patina is the wrong word, but thats what it seems like. the scratches blend together. that soft steel? sure it loses that razor edge like it was never there, but on a job site, anything will. and the seb keeps a workable edge all day through damn near anything, and when you get the inevitable chip, it doesn't take 4 hours to work out.
everything that i considered a flaw in the sebenza as an edc knife, i cherish in the sebenza as a hard work knife.
