48th Maximum ft. Accudart Fatties

Tonight I hit my 48th lifetime Ton-80, and it is my 4th for the year (I believe).  The darts in use are 25 gram Accudart 301's, which are a mixed material barrel.  The front half is tungsten, and the back half is brass. (Like the dart version of a mullet, I guess.)  The stem is a short 1/4" threaded aluminum, and the flights are standard dimplex.

By way of comparison, here they are next to a 20 gram tungsten UFO:

An Abortive Outing (But a Good One)

On Monday night I had a couple hours to kill before I had to run an errand and so I dropped into the local knowing that there'd be a singles tournament starting at 7:30.  I entered the contest knowing I wouldn't be able to finish it, and the organizer was okay with that.  Since it was a double elimination event he figured that if I played poorly enough it wouldn't matter.

I didn't play poorly :)  I played two best of three matches before I had to leave and I won them both. The first 2-1, the second 2-0.

The first match was against a guy named Sean, and he won the first game, 163-160. We both threw a 1.9, which is a bit low for my taste, and I only had one good round which was a 5-mark on 20's and 18's, but I also had 2 dead rounds.  He out played me for the win but only barely.  The second game I clearly outshot him, 1.9 to 1.4, and the win was 114 to 16.  I also only had a single 5-mark round, this time on 20's and 19's, and I had 1 dead round in this game, near the end.  The last, tie-breaking leg was in my favor, 225 - 188, with averages of 2.4 (me) to 1.7.  But again, I had two dead rounds in that leg, and only one nice round, which was a 6-mark: T16 and T20 late in the game to close the open 20's and stop the hemorrhaging!

The next match I played I thought for sure I'd get smashed.  The guy was quite a good shot and hot, hot, HOT on the 17's.  Oddly though, I kept up and was able to win 2 - 0.  The first leg was a pitched battle.  He shot a 2.7, I shot a 2.9.  He had 2 5-mark rounds, I had a single 6-mark round.  I accumulated 341 points, he had 309 points.  My opponent, a San Franciscan transplant named Tom, hit a whopping 18 17's during the game.  I was only able to beat him because I had zero dead rounds, and was able to stay ahead in most numbers getting a little bit of points here and there to counter his incredible slew of 17's, and also because I hit 2 double bulls in the last two rounds to finally catch up in points and put a bow on it.  That was a great game.  And a fun one.

The next leg I also won, 96 - 87.  I hit no high-mark rounds but I also didn't have any dead rounds.  We both shot a 2.2, and in the end I was able to catch up in points and end the game by hitting four bulls in the last two rounds.  Bulls practice is helpful.

Then I had to leave which is too bad since I was still in the winner's bracket.  At least a couple of guys got a couple of free wins off me in my absence so good for them.

The darts I took with me were the 16 gram Harrows Magnums that I hit my last Ton-80 with at home:

As you can see, they are wearing white medium nylon stems, US Darts moving point conversions, and slim poly flights.  They are a nice little dart, although I wasn't wowing myself with them in competition like I was at home.

As you can see, everything fit into that little mints container, including an eye glasses micro-fiber cloth which is helpful for bespectacled fellows like me.

47th Ton-80

Hit my 47th lifetime Ton-80 tonight while throwing quite casually in my garage.  I'd spent the better part of two hours weighing various UFO sets, and having an occasional solo DIDO 301 in between.  Happily, I hit this:

These are my 16 gram Harrows Magnums, wearing US Darts MP points, medium white nylon stems, and slim poly flights.

Smooth Darts

Mostly for my own reference, I wanted to assemble my collection of smooth barreled darts.

From top to bottom:

1. Vintage brass dart of unknown make. The three really interesting aspects of this dart are that a) it has a hexagonal body which is uncommon to see, even in vintage darts; b)the barrel and the stem are all one piece of brass with the exception of the hairpin, of course; and c) it uses a hairpin style flight holder to hold paper flights.  The downside to this system is that it bends easy and it almost impossible to get straight again, and the hair pin is flat, preventing the loaded flight from be a perfect "X".
2. 17 gram Voks Javelin.  These are not a tungsten dart, but rather steel, which makes it very light for its weight. To my knowledge, this is the only steel dart I have in my collection.
3. 23 gram custom dart, designed by me, implemented by Jeff Pickup.  This is the set that you will see throughout my blog referred to as the "Dagnabits".
4. 23 gram bottelsen GT.  This is an older set, and I know this because there is no 4ba threading in the back to take the modern screw-in GT stem.
5. 25 gram Fansteel UFO.  I believe they are Fansteel because the came in a Fansteel pouch, but this is not proof positive.  What's interesting about these darts is that the barrel appears to be comprised of two different metals that are joined somehow.  Either that, or the middle portion had a coating on it of some sort.
6. 26 gram CT's. This is another Jeff Pickup implementation of my own design (although in this case it was less design and more specification, as it is an exact replica of a GT but in copper tungsten, and with a fixed point).
7. 26 gram McCoy.  This is another copper tungsten barrel.
8. 28 gram Bottelsen "Black" GT.  This was my first big dart purchase.  They came with a black colored coating on them originally, but that has long since worn off, leaving a bit of a gray color.
9. 23 gram Jenkins.  I have no idea who made this dart or when, but I absolutely love it. It throws real nice.  And I am only guessing that it is actually an official Terry Jenkins dart (as opposed to a custom dart).
10. 23 gram UFO.  The person who traded this to me years ago claimed (I think) that it was a custom dart, but it is strikingly similar to the Sleek model from Red Dragon.
11. 30 gram Schofield.  My guess is that this is the most modern of the Schofield dart line.  I have only ever seen one other tungsten Schofield before and it sported the push-in cane stems.  This one is threaded for 1/4" stems.