Gifts that will be appreciated by all gun-owning dads, grads
by John C. Krull
Gun Week Production Manager
June has always been one of my favorite months. There just seems to be so much going on in June with new life coming back after the long winter, kids finishing their exams and finishing another year of school. Graduations from grade school to high school; high school to college and those who have completed their long sought after degrees leaving college; marriages of friends and relatives, and a celebration that I had always enjoyed as a child—Father’s Day.
I imagine that it could be just another one of those days made up by card manufacturers. I don’t really know its origin, but Father’s Day always had meaning for me because it was a day that I honored and thanked my father, my dad, for being there. So here are a few gift ideas that can be used for any of those special days that are coming up in your life, either for your dad or that grad.
While I never did much fishing with my father I did a lot of fishing with my daughter. To celebrate Father’s Day for several years Helen and I would go to Erie County Conservation Society to do some canoeing and bass fishing on the pond there.
Something that would have been nice to have had would have been the Quik Slide Stringer System by Innovative Products LLC (6517 S. Kings Ranch Rd., Dept. GWK, Ste 206, Gold Canyon, AZ 85218; online: quikslide.com). The Quik Slide is a fish stringing system where the stainless steel snaps are separate from the line until you put them there.
It is as simple as 1, 2, 3 to use. One; you position the slide under the exposed section of cable. Two; put the cable through the notch of the slide. Three; slide the snap onto the cable for a tangle-free string of fish.
The Quik Slide Stringer System comes in three sizes or lengths and three colors. The colors are blue, green and tan. The three-foot stringer comes with six snaps and has a retail price of $14.95. The six-foot and 14-foot stingers come with eight snaps each and are priced at $16.95 and $18.95 respectively. Extra snaps are available at a cost of $9.95 for an additional six snaps.
Most reloaders are familiar with Forster Products (310 E Lanark Ave., Dept. GWK, Lanark, IL 61046; phone 815-493-6360; online: forsterproducts.com). I have been using one of their turret presses for many years now. A new product that 
they came out with this year is a gunsmith screwdriver set. The set consists of eight different screwdrivers with the following screwdriver sizes included: Nos. 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 14; 15, and 16. Each manufacturer seems to use a different screw size, making it necessary for anyone working on guns to need the different sizes if they want to avoid slippage and scratching of valuable firearms.
I used two different screwdrivers just yesterday when I was removing scopes from a couple of guns to be shipped. The complete kit sells for $56 and is well worth every penny of it. Individual screwdrivers are available for about $9 each. Go online and check out their guide to gunsmith’s screwdrivers. I think you will find it interesting. Another good thing about them is that they are made in the USA.
Gerber Legendary Blades (2255 Brunton Ct., Dept. GWK, Riverton, WY 82501; phone: 307-857-4700; online: gerberblades.com) has been known for their cutlery all the way back to 1939 in Portland, OR. Originally, Joseph Gerber started Portland’s Gerber Advertising back in 1910. One Christmas, he hired a local knifemaker to craft 25 sets of kitchen cutlery as client gifts. The knives were so popular, Gerber ultimately left his agency to launch Gerber Legendary Blades in 1939. And so the story continues today with Gerber making not only knifes in many styles, sizes and shapes but they have ventured into other products such as lighting, axes, saws, shovels and other outdoor gear.
At the 2009 SHOT Show, Sue Melus showed me around the new products that Gerber was offering. They have a new line of knives they have named the Metolius series. I really liked the caping knife, so she was able to send me one.
This isn’t the biggest knife in the world but then you rarely really need a big knife. It is just 6.5 inches long with the actual blade being 2.5 inches of that. It is a straight-bladed knife made of one piece of steel with rubberized type scales on the grip. The blades have a thumb grip and deep finger grooves for easy handling. The rubberized grip is called the SoftGrip by Gerber and prevents slippage even when covered with blood. The Caper has an oversized lanyard hole, that a piece of paracord will fit nicely into. With it comes a nylon sheath that will fit up to a 2-inch belt. The Caper’s retail price is between $20 and $25 and is a real bargain. Like all blades from Gerber, there is a limited lifetime warranty.
We have two products from the next company which is Sentry Solutions Ltd. (PO Box 214, Dept. GWK, Wilton, NH 03086; phone: 800-546-8049; online: sentrysolutions.com). The first product is their Knife & Tool Care Kit. This kit comes in its own nylon carrying case and holds just four different types of items, but they are plenty to keep your knives in good working order and lubricated to prevent rust.
The first item is the Tuf-Cloth. This comes in a vapor barrier pouch. The Tuf-Cloth is 12x12 inches in size. The Tuf-Cloth will put a dry-bonded, non-toxic protection on your knives and tools. It will remove fingerprints. It puts a waterproof shield on the metal, which will displace moisture and prevent rust. Something I really like is that it has a long-lasting, lint-free protection and each cloth is good for about 100 uses.
Another item in the kit is the Tuf-Glide. This comes in a clear applicator with a needle-like tip for pinpoint accuracy in applying the Tuf-Glide where you want it to go. This way you can get into the hinges or any close part on a tool or knife. It is the same material that the Tuf-Cloth is impregnated with; so to rejuvenate the cloth, just add a few drops from the Tuf-Glide.
The third item included in the kit is a Gatco MicroX knife sharpener. This is a small plastic frame a little over 2 inches square that holds two sets of ceramic sharpening rods. There are two fine and two medium rods. The rods are removable for easy cleaning. The MicroX has built-in angle guides to make sharpening easy. You can also use the rods side by side to sharpen fish hooks, darts or any other pointed tools.
Finally, there are a few durable lint-free swab type items to clean out the nooks and crannies that you can’t get at with a cloth. The retail price of the complete Knife & Tool Care Kit is $25.
The second product from Sentry is their Armorer’s Kit. This contains a lot more stuff. The Kit includes: Smooth Kote—an excellent lubrication and bore treatment that makes cleaning your gun simple. BP2000 Powder is a pure lubricant to fine-tune surfaces of bores, bolts, slides and trigger parts. Hi-Slip Grease is a synthetic grease, specifically designed for firearms, that has the benefits of oil but will stay put. It lubricates over a wide temperature range and will not wash off. And, of course, Sentry has included a Tuf-Cloth which will replace oil/silicone rags.
There are also a slew of support items for using these products, which include rubber gloves (it could be messy), alcohol swabs, a metal brush, Q-tips, pipe cleaners, lint-free swabs and some bore patches. Included are four pages of instructions which I think it will behoove you to read before use. The retail price of the Armorer’s Kit is $40 with discounts for every three units purchased. This is another product we can say proudly is made in the USA. The carrying case for the Knife Kit was made in Mexico.
It is hard for me to believe that this year the 30th Edition of the Blue Book of Gun Values (Blue Book Publications Inc., 8009 34th Ave. S, Ste 175, Dept. GWK, Minneapolis, MN 55425; phone: 800-877-4867; online: bluebookinc.com) has just hit the book stands. Just three years ago the Blue Book contained 2008 pages. Three years later, there are now 2272 pages in the 30th edition. Just yesterday I had a customer and his dad here and they were asking me a price on a gun he has. All I did was hand him the Blue Book and told him to look it up. So now the son is going to buy the book for his father for Father’s Day.
He wanted to know how to judge what condition his gun is in. So I referred him to the section in the Blue Book on Photo Percentage Grading System. This section has 80 pages of color photos. So the Blue Book can help you in many ways. This issue has over 400,000 firearms prices and one million words of text. There are over 1.3 million copies in print. This book is complete and up-to-date and the one that I personally trust. This year the Blue Book will cost you $50 but don’t think about it like that; think about it as just .02 a page.
Colonial Knife Company (PO Box 960, Dept. GWK, North Scituate, RI 02857; phone: 866-421-6500; online: colonialknifecompany.com) has in their line of knives an Auto Hook rescue tool. The blade on this knife deploys by means of pushing a button. It also has a safety so that the blade can’t deploy by accident.
The blade serves very few purposes but when you need it, it could save your live or the life of someone you love. It is called a hook because that is exactly what it is, a hook for cutting seat belts from victims trapped inside cars. The tail end of the knife also has a glass breaker on it to assist in breaking windshields and windows on vehicles. This knife isn’t expensive and if carried could be a life saver. The retail price of the Auto Hook is $49.99 so you might want to get more than one.
That should give you some good ideas on what to get your dad for Father’s Day or your son for graduation or whoever that special person is in your life this June. Remember whenever you contact any of these companies to tell them that John at Gun Week sent you.
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