If you dream of owning an heirloom hunting knife, chances are you’ll find it Saturday and Sunday at the 19th annual Arkansas Custom Knife Show at the Robinson Center in downtown Little Rock.
Held by the Arkansas Knifemakers Association, the show will showcase hand-crafted knives by many of the art’s top names. Show hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $10.
James Scroggs, Jerry Mc-Clure, Brion Tomberlin, Bill Kirkes and Lee Ferguson have donated some beautiful knives that will be given away. More information is available online at arkansasknifemakers.com/arkansas-custom-knife-show.html.
No matter what kind of knife you own, you must keep it sharp.
Over the past two years I’ve used several knife sharpeners. The best - and the standard by which I measure all others - is the Work Sharp Knife and Tool Sharpener. It’s a portable belt honer that puts a razor edge on all blade designs, as well as scissors, shovels, mower blades and hatchets.
It has a 50-degree guide to ensure that sporting knives maintain a proper contact angle with the belt, and a 40-degree guide for kitchen knives. It also has a guide for serrated knives. You can get extra belts in P80, P220 and 6000 grit. It costs about $80 at a number of places locally, and it’s worth every penny.
Anglers might be interested in the Chef’s Choice Marine Sharpening Station. This is a familiar type of sharpening station with diamond grinding wheels inside a housing. It is designed to sharpen filleting knives, but it also has a scissors sharpener and a separate fishhook sharpener.
The unit is water resistant and rated IPX-4. It is designed to resist saltwater environments and can be cleaned with a low-pressure hose. It also has suction feet to keep it stationary in rough water if it’s mounted in a boat. It excels at sharpening fishing knives. It has a two-year warranty and costs about $200.
A decent little sharpener that is ideal for your camper is the Any Sharp knife sharpener. It’s a small and simple device consisting of two tungsten carbide steels set in a wedge. Drag the blade through the wedge three or four times to revitalize the edge.
It works OK, but I like it best for sharpening pocketknives. The bottom of the unit contains a large suction cup that attaches securely to a refrigerator door or a flat cabinet door. It costs about $30.
LIVE BAIT BUCKET
Every minnow bucket I’ve owned came to an unfortunate end. The last one jumped ship and found asylum in the Interstate 40 median between Russellville and Conway. It was a Frabill bucket-within-a-bucket job that you can tie to the boat and let it float in the water. It has the little door that swings inward to keep minnows from swimming out.
After that one escaped, I upgraded to an Engel Minnow Cooler. The ultimate minnow keeper, it’s actually a 19-quart insulated cooler, about the size of a Yeti Roadie. It keeps the contents cool, and two latches secure the lid tightly to the body.
It also comes with an electric air pump that runs on two D-cell batteries. It also comes with a 12V adapter so you can power it with the cigarette lighter in your boat or car. The pump has two speeds, and it clips to a small bracket on the side of the case.
Also included is a length of clear tubing and a little stone that fizzes the air supply to aerate the water. The tube enters the body through a small hole that is ringed with a rubber grommet. That allows you to keep the case locked without pinching the tube.
I bought it about a year ago and used it for the first time last weekend. I bought a mess of giant walleye minnows and took them to the Ouachita River. It is now late Wednesday morning. The pump has been running nonstop on battery power, and the minnows are still very lively. All I’ve done is refresh the water.
I seldom used live bait in the past because it was so hard to keep it alive and in good condition. In ordinary buckets, minnows don’t last long in hot weather. For about $80, that problem is solved.
And, since the vacuum-sealed lid keeps water from sloshing out, it rides safely in the cab of my truck.
Sports, Pages 22 on 02/20/2014