Sebenza Flat or Hollow ground

TedV

TedV

Joined
Jul 18, 2000
Messages
1,289
Hi,
I'm a bit confused about the different grindings of the Large Sebenza.

Is the flat ground the same like a Spyderco Military, as in, from the spine to the edge? Or is that called a 'full flat ground'.
I found a picture from someone on this forum, see link below, but I thought that that was called a hollow ground?
In what way is the 'flat ground' Sebenza different from the standard ('hollow ground??') Sebenza?

http://home.bellsouth.net/personalpages/scripts/community.dll?ep=334&fileid=90885&groupid=9865&folderid=16967&curRec=1&folderview=thumbs&ck=&uzip=29657

Thanks for all the help.
Ted
 
I actually prefer a flat ground blade to hollow ground. On a hollow ground blade the grind is kind of concave making the blade in theory easier to cut do to a thinner blade. Flat, being the opposite gives the blade the full thickness allowing heavier cutting. Chris does not offer his flat grind on current Sebenza'a with S30V blade steel. There are older ones on the market with BG-42, but hard to come by. I beleive you can still order Damascus Sebbies with a flat ground blade though.:)
 
The hollow grind does have one significant advantage over the flat grind. The thickness behind the edge bevel of a flat ground knife will get thicker and thicker as the blade is sharpened over time. So a flat ground knife, will cut less efficiently with every sharpening. A hollow ground knife, when properly made, will keep a more consistent thickness behind the edge bevel, thus retaining its cutting efficiency over many repeated sharpenings.

I personally think that hollow grinds are much more practical on smaller knives such as folders, as they are almost never used as prybars, if the owner has some common sense in his knife use. The lateral strength of the blade on a small knife just isn’t much of an issue in comparison to cutting efficiency.
 
The knife in the picture is a flat ground Sebenza. The description "flat" or "hollow" grind refers to the part of the blade where material is removed, reducing the thickness from the back edge to the cutting edge. Whether that starts right at the back edge or further down the blade makes no difference to what kind of grind it is. The picture below shows the difference between flat and hollow ground Sebenza blades.

There are pros and cons to both types of grinds. We made around 160 large Sebenzas from BG42 - Chris has signed the blades of all of them to increase the collector value. We stopped making them because we could not get consistency in the accuracy we required. We don't have (nor have we ever had!) flat ground Damascus blades.

Anne
 
Anne, thanks for the info. It's now crystal clear to me.

Another thing, the website www.chrisreeve.com still has the flat-ground BG-42 in the pricelist. Can it still be ordered? And, if so, is it directly available, or would it need to be assembled and then have a longer delivery time?

http://www.chrisreeve.com/plsebumf.html


BG 42 - flat *** $345.00
...
*** While Available - Flat Ground


Thanks,
Ted
 
We do still have some available - I think there are around 10 still to be made. Delivery for a flat ground Sebenza is not likely to be longer than a regular plain Sebenza!

Anne
 
"Still to be made":eek:
Anne, does that mean that one can be had in S30V?
 
Sorry if my choice of words was misleading - no, S30V flat ground is not an option. All the blades have been ground but not yet been assembled into knives - that's the "still to be made" part!

Anne
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top