UFO 003

 These diminutive beauties are a mere 16.9 grams per barrel, with tip. No idea what the vintage or make and model of them are though.  They fly nice!

18.5 gram D.Craft Bombers

These are the most unusual darts I have, perhaps. They are massive for their weight which makes me wonder what they are even made out of. If they were brass they'd be much larger, so perhaps they are some sort of coated aluminum. 

Here you can see that I have them wearing long-shape Condors and some sort of titanium conversion point that actually came on a different set of darts. 

They fly weird. Maybe it is more accurate to say that they throw weird. And obviously I don't dare try grouping with them because I would most certainly destroy them in the process. Doesn't matter too much since they will likely not see the light of day much. I doubt if they will be in any sort of rotation, and will likely live in the box they came in for most of their lives.

It is easier to see how wide they are when you see them actually sticking out of the board. Most rounds in the one practice game I actually used them I needed to walk up to the board to see where they hit. Happily I hit the D16 on the first try :P

17 gram UFO 002

I know nothing about these darts, other than that they are 17 grams, and appear to be a rough home-job. I love the grippiness of them and they through well, but like any light-weight dart they need a bit of force behind them.

18 gram Accudart Revolvers

This is a pretty interesting modern offering, in the sense that the dart has a couple of primary design features that are less commonly seen on modern darts.  First and foremost, is seems like 95% of the darts for sale out there are tungsten darts of one density or another with even brass, once the mainstay material of steel tip darts, taking a back seat.  Brass darts are still made and sold, but the overwhelming majority of dart players out there feel that their chances of hitting those tight groupings in triples are heightened by going with tungsten.

But these bad boys are neither tungsten, nor brass.  They are stainless steel. A material that is highly uncommon in darts and has an even lower density than brass (stainless steel is ~ 7400 kg/m3, while brass is in the neighborhood of ~ 8400 kg/m3).  I only have one other set of steel darts (don't think they are stainless) and it clocks in at 17 grams despite being roughly the same size and shape as my 23 gram Bottelsen GT's.

The second primary design feature of this dart is the fact that the grip relies entirely on slight fluting along the length of the barrel.  My guess is that the name 'Revolver' comes from this design as if you look at the dart nose-on the profile of the barrel is slightly reminiscent of the cylinder of a revolver (which is also (usually) fluted).  All in all I think the fluting on these darts could stand to be a bit deeper, but it is a nice design feature and I like it.

After having thrown them for a while I think that may favored configuration for them is as follows. Short length Gear Fit Stems with Shape Fit Flight Airs.

The case it come in was basically a standard folding darts case encased in clamshell packaging for store display and advertising purposes:

There was also, on the back a very interesting, if esoteric, chart to help you select what darts "are best for you.":

I do not really know what they mean by "Response" or "Compensating", but I can tell you grouping is a factor of accuracy, not material ;)  On this chart, I completely grok Brass and Stainless Steel, but I cannot imagine what they mean by listing Nickel and Tungsten as separate materials. Darts are rarely (if ever) made from just nickel, or just tungsten.  Usually it is a tungsten-nickel alloy.  Even more ungrokkable, however, is "Black Magic".  What the fuck is that supposed to be?

Anyway, I like these darts.  Well done Accudart.

24 gram Smooth DMI Warriors

I think these were originally DMI darts in the "Warrior" line but it has been so long since I bought the original set that I do not have a strong memory of who made them.  I do know they were originally called Warriors though.

The very unique thing about these darts is the uni-body design which is all tungsten (with a steel nose) that tapers down to where it takes only the top portion of a Spinster shaft to hold a flight.

24 gr "Vintage Line" Bottelsen Hammerheads

I love me some Bottelsens.  I have a very hard time resisting buying them when I see them, especially if they are old or unusual or interesting, or just, well, darty.  This set is from a discontinued line called the "Vintage" line of original hammerheads.  This particular set is your typical 24 gram, 2BA threaded (front and back) hammerhead-equipped, dart:

The below close up shows off the barrel a little bit better.  The grip is on the grippier side of the Bottelsen knurl.  One of the things I have quite appreciated from Bottelsen over the years is that they have always offered several levels of grippiness with their knurling from completely smooth (which I like), to very fine knurling (which is a bit slippy for me, ironically), all the way to "Gorilla Grip" which is their grippiest knurling.  I believe the knurl on these darts would be classified as the "course knurl".  Also, the dart is a 9/32 thickness which I prefer over the 1/4, and is shorter.

The packaging:

There is nothing like the distinctive click of a hammerhead dart when it hits the board.  It is a comforting sound to me, even if I do not buy into the theory that moving points help prevent bounce-outs on wired boards.  This set, as configured here are dressed in short aluminum stems and SEWA pear flight.  I thought that was a nice appropriate look for an American made dart!

11 gram Brass UFO's

These little beauties are a sheer joy to throw.  They are light as a feather, or at least feel so.  I can only assume that they were made by someone, somewhere as a soft tip dart.  They are all brass with an incorporated stem, and only a small stem top to hold the flight in place.  The sleekness of the body and the thoughtfully engineered flight holder make me think this was a professionally done dart.  They are slightly reminiscent of a Bottelsen GT.

The body is all brass, and the flight holder is a small screw-in piece that looks like it could be the top of an old two-piece stem, but I have no idea what thread it is.  one of these days I am going to get a tap and die kit that will allow me to determine exactly what the various threads are on some of the old darts I have, including this one. 

The Reflex conversion points fit them like a glove.  They almost seem designed with these darts in mind.

Throwing them takes practice.  Once you get the hang of them they fly pretty well though.  Chucking them at the triple 20 will reward you with ample 1's and 5's because they are so light they are kind of like chucking a feather at the dartboard, but I eventually got on with them well enough.  In a round of doubles practice last night I hit a Doubles Trick in the 18, 19, and 20 as you can see below.

I have never seen this dart before, or anything like it really.  I'd love to have this dart in various materials, or even mixed materials.  If the front end of the dart were tungsten it'd probably fly a little more true.

26 gram Dartworld Scoundrels

The Scoundrel is an interesting dart. No longer on the market, these darts were made by Dartworld in probably the 80's or 90's and, if I guess correctly, are Dartworld's answer to the Bottelsen GT line.  I say this because the dart is an especially skinny-waisted dart, taking a stem that is smaller than 3BA, but not quite as small as the 6BA of the GT line.  While this makes it an interesting dart to have and throw, it limits your options quite a bit.  After all, there isn't a single compatible stem available for purchase anywhere, and fancier stem and flight setups like the Fit Flight system are a non-starter.

This particular model is 26 grams, but I have seen others that were 24, and with a slightly different grip design, like these, but I have no idea what the entire lineup looked like, or what the weight range was originally.  Someday I'd like to get my hands on the Dartworld catalogs from that era and have a look but until that happens, they are a mystery.

The following pic is my preferred set up for them, even really all you can really do with them is swap out the flights and put on the silver stems instead of the black ones (I prefer the black).  The flights are Target X flights which are a slightly smaller standard flight.  I am surprised they throw so well with that small of a flight despite their relatively high grammage.  I find that while my middle finger still goes where the point meets the barrel, my index and thumb are slightly more back than usual where the barrel slopes to its skinny waist, basically surrounding the bulk of the dart.  I found myself hitting doubles more than I thought I would for such a new, and different dart.  I really like how they throw.  I think I'll take them to league one night and see how they do over the course of an evening.

I got a pretty pristine set, complete with case and all the internals intact and no visible damage to the darts themselves.  I am sure they have been throw, but by the looks of them not very much.  I am not sure what (if anything) went in the hollow space beneath the spare stems in the case.

19 gr Accudart Cricket

An absolutely sweet little dart.  This is a 19 gram version of Accudart's steel tip Cricket line.  I love these little darts.  I have been using them a lot lately and I am looking forwards to trying them out in a competitive scenario.  It feels like forever since I have played a match against anyone!  I have been experimenting with the best stem and flight combo for them as well.  In the first photo below you can see I have settled on #6 Fit Flight Carbon stems and Shape Fit Flight Airs.  I also put in some black Volute points when I am quite taking a liking to.

The knurl is quite grippy.  Some knurls are smooth and even slippy (like the Harrows Boxers) but the knurl on these darts have bite, which is nice.

I am not sure how I feel about the trend towards clamshell packaging for darts.  It seems to cheapen the product some in my opinion, but it is not only Accudart doing this.  All the dart makers are utilizing clamshelling for at least some of their product lines these days.  I have seen it with Bottelsen and with Unicorn (I think) and others.  I guess the idea is that they want to sell their stuff in big box stores where they would be hanging on hooks (thus the hook-hole at top).  I have to admit, in my early days of this hobby I spent a lot of time staring at the various Halex darts hanging in their clam shells in Fred Meyers and other places that sell low end sporting equipments.  It wasn't until I was thoroughly hooked that I started perusing the high end sets on websites.

I notice in the picture that you can see on the back of the clamshell packaging that there is a Cricket dart with a more conical nose and a different striping pattern.  I am guessing that Accudart made several darts in this line in different weights and styles.  I'd love to see them all but it is hard to find their old catalogs online anywhere and since they stopped making this dart information is simply impossible to find on it.

On the whole, this is a terrific dart, one which I will continue to throw in practice and in competition.  As they are currently dressed, they are wearing medium length Twin-Grip nylon stems and slim poly flights.  I had them dressed as such originally so that flights would match the color scheme of the darts but as I have become highly enamored of the Fit Flight system I will probably get some #6 carbon stems and some red slim Fit Flight Airs to go with them.

23 gram Elkadart Steve Beatons

Originally I thought these darts were Voks due to the spring loaded point. As it happens, tho, they probably are not.  One person at Dartsnutz.net believes they are Steve Beatons and this was seconded by someone who was selling a set on ebay and listed them as 

"MEGA RARE 23 GRAM ELKADART STEVE BEATON SPRING LOADED TUNGSTEN DARTS".

I don't know for sure but I am willing to go with that.  Of course, if something is listed as "mega rare" on ebay, that means it most certainly is not.  Still, other than my set, this is the only set of them I have ever seen.

As they are currently configured, they are wearing their original spring loaded steel tip point and medium length, standard condor stem-flights.

21 g Mission Kronos M1 with Iso-Linear Grip

After much experimenting this is the configuration that I feel fits my throw (and the weight of the darts) best.

Very grippy, but not obnoxiously so!  The grip seems to encourage a "flick" throw.  As configured these darts are:

Barrels: 21 g, 95% Tungsten Mission Kronos
Stems: In-Between Aluminum
Flights: Smooth Poly Slim flights

18 gr Halex UFO's

These darts are another random surprise that came to me in the mail from my father.  They are a Halex coated brass dart with a funky barrel design.  I think they initially intended that the scallop be nearer to the point of the dart, and I suspect they are marketed as a soft tip dart, but tough t say without seeing the packaging new.  As you can see, my preferred configuration is the reverse. The scallop goes in back where my fingers go, and to heck with soft tips.  I am a steep tip player :)

Also, back in the day (like 15 years ago) I bought a set of what were then called "Fancy Conversion Points" and I have struggled to find a really good home for them on any set of darts.  They are thick at the base, have a funky, coppery color to them and are anything but streamlined.  It makes them hard to home.  However, I think they present really nicely on this set of darts.

As currently configured they throw rather well and I really enjoy them whenever I break them out.  They are a modern enough dart that they really should not be considered UFO's and once I find a good picture of their original packaging online I will be able to identify them more precisely.  Their current configuration:

Points: Fancy conversion points
Barrels: copper-coated brass
Stems: short aluminum
Flights: dimplex coal crackers

16 gr Coated Ringed UFO's

I am quite lucky.  My father will go to auctions and buy up any dart related stuff and send it to me when he sees it (which is not that often, actually).  So from time to time I get random darts stuff in the mail.  I love it all and I greatly appreciate the random gifts (thanks dad!).  The below is one such prize.  I am pretty sure they were wearing plastic points when I got them but I cannot remember for sure.  Sadly, their original packaging was included so I don't really know what they are.

All I know about these darts is that they are 16 grams, a coated brass, and that they were probably intended for soft tip play.  I know they are brass for two reasons:  first, the size to weight ratio rules out any denser metal.  Also, inside the 2ba stem hole you can see that the raw metal is brass colored.

Wearing hammerhead points the darts are quite a nice addition to my collection.  They fly well as configured and the grip is not overly aggressive.  I have posted these darts to dartnutz.net's UFO section hoping someone can identify them.

18 gr Bottelsen Gap Hammerheads

Funky little darts.  They are an 18 gram version of their "The Gap" Hammerhead darts and they were intended as a soft tip dart but as I do not play soft tip I convert everything :)  As the barrels are quite short, I can easily dress them in my favorite stems: Twin-Grips, which I only have medium length of anymore.

The darts as pictured have an old set of hammerhead points in them, the medium Twin-Grips, and smooth poly coal-crackers. 

When I get in a groove with these darts they can really fly.  To my knowledge I have never ton-80'd with them but I have hit many, many high tons.  As currently configured that fly straight and true, hitting the board parallel to the ground and they slim barrels have no problems crowding into a treble bed.  The problem I have with them is that the placement of the scallop in the barrel is too far forward for my grip and I end up placing my index and thumb behind the scallop, which just feels weird every time I do it.  I love the weight and the slimness of the barrel though, and especially the length of the barrel.  I wish I could get these exact same darts but with the scallop moved to the back of the barrel so that it coincides with my grip a little better.

22 gr Harrows Power Point Eric Bristow

These are some special darts. Most importantly they throw quite well, but also they are nice looking and as far as I can tell, a little bit hard to find these days.  I knew I loved them from the very first time I laid hands on one.  Back in the day, in my early days of league play, the owner of the bar that sponsored my team(s) had a set.  He offered to sell them to me.  I asked if I could throw them and sure enough, the very first dart was a double bull.  Just like that.  A B Leaguer like me suddenly made it look easy, with these Eric Bristow Power Points!  Foolishly I did not buy them.  This set I picked up much later.

Last night my neighbor and I went for darts and beers as we are wont to do, and I brought these and another set of darts.  I offered him the choice of darts and he chose the others so happily I threw these all night.  I did well.  When I play with him, because he never plays darts and I always do, his 01 games are SISO, and mine are DIDO with the added complication that I have to "Bull In" each round before I can score for that round.  I hit a lot of bulls last night :)

The Power Point line has always had a nice looking nose, and the second pic below kinda shows it off.  Most other screw-in MP systems have a collar that has flats on two sides giving the nose a definitive imperfect mechanical look but not these.  The only other MP system that I thought looked better were basically anything produced by Jeff Pickup (who, incidentally, invented the Power Point system and sold it to Harrows).

These darts also have better barrels than others in the Power Point line in my opinion.  They are thinner, for one, but also, they seem to have a higher grade tungsten for them to be so skinny and yet to weigh in at 22 grams.  The others (previously) are an 80% line and while I never have owned any they did not appeal to me visually with one exception:  the Power Point Dimplex, which I found to be too aggressively knurled, and not a good throwing dart.  The modern Power Point line is 90% I believe and they do not visually appeal to me either.

I have been dressing these beauties in medium, standard Condor stem-flights and that seems to be a good configuration for these darts.  They angle up in the board slightly, but not too badly.

22 gr Dart World Pro Point 80's

These are some interesting darts.  They definitely have some con points and some pro points (haha, see what I did there?).  On the pro side of the equation I'd say that they are very grippy for lightly knurled darts, if you're into that sort of thing, and the esthetic is there too.  These are unquestionably nice looking darts.

As you can see in the second picture, the collars for the moving points are extraordinarily low profile, almost indistinguishable from the barrel of the dart.  The action is sluggish, however.  In fact, I very strongly suspect that the collars incorporate an embedded o-ring inside that the point itself slides across.  If I am not mistaken this is the exact same mechanism that was invented by Jeff Pickup and eventually sold to Harrows for their Power Point line.  I am tempted to get some needle nose pliers and try to unscrew one of the collars but I do not want to mar the darts.

The grip is great.  The knurling is fine but the grip that comes with them is very grippy.  I have been using smooth darts lately like old copper tungstens, but back in the day I was very interested in finding darts with knurling exactly like this one.

The case is a pretty typical darts case for the era that these were produced, but I am glad I have the case for them.  I don't know what they were trying to do with that 'T' in the logo for the line but it looks like a half effort.  Still, the darts themselves are quite nice, even if the action in the points is too sluggish.  When you pull moving point darts from a dartboard the typical behavior is that the points will automatically pull out to set position at the same time.  Not these.  You have to manually pull the points on each dart once you have them in hand again.

Bottelsen UFO's

I picked up the term "UFO" to describe unknown sets of darts from dartsnutz.net.  I love the term.  First, it is cheeky.  Second it borrows from the mystique created by The X-Files, which I am recently watching (and loving) for the first time ever.  I cannot believe I never watched that show before.

These darts, despite being much more massive than other darts in the same weight range, are a meager 20 grams.  This, and the fact that they have a "silvery" hue to them, and somewhat slickery feel, makes me think that they are not tungsten at all, but rather a nickel-silver dart.  Funny how few nickel-silver darts there are out there.  There are literally a gazillion brass darts available, and just as many tungsten darts, but darts of this composition are significantly fewer, in my humble opinion.

As currently dressed:
Points: Bottelsen Hammerhead Points
Barrel: 20 gram Nickel-Silver
Stems: Short Aluminum
Flights: Standard Mylar (folded)

Anyway, the above darts are likely Bottelsen darts because when I got them they came with a Bottelsen leather flap wallet, and the mylar folded flights you see in the pic. Not long ago I reached out to Bottelsen to see if there was anyone there with copies of old catalogs that I could look through and got quite a cold shoulder from them.  This makes me sad a bit.  They are a great dart maker and have contributed to the substance of the dart universe significantly.  I wish there were someone there who was more of a dart geek, cared about preserving (and sharing) their own history, etc.

If I am ever a dart maker I will never, never, ignore a fan who cares about the history of darts equipment!

12g Unicorn Aluminum Darts

I believe very strongly that these are unicorn darts and are quite old (40 or 50 years) but I am not 100% certain because I cannot find them in their online heritage catalogs.  There are a few reasons why I believe them to be Unicorn. Four reasons, in fact.

First, I know for a fact that Unicorn has made other aluminum darts.  I used to have a set called the Unicorn Bantam which had a brass nose and the rest of the body was aluminum (those were only 10 grams).  Secondly, while I did not see this particular dart in any of the online catalogs, I did see plenty of brass torpedo darts that have the same body.  And I mean exactly the same body. But as we all know, the torpedo shaped dart was not unique to Unicorn.  This brings me to the third reason I suspect it as a Unicorn offering, and that is the ring pattern starts early.  The first ring is just millimeters back of the point, which as far as I know, was a ring pattern common to Unicorn darts, but not necessarily others.

The below pic provides a better view of the overall dart in which you can see the torpedo shape more saliently.  

In the below picture you can see the 12 gram aluminum dart (bottom) contrasted against a 20 gram tungsten dart (top).  The tungsten dart is another unknown, btw, though I would dearly love to know anything about them.  The aluminum dart has nearly twice the mass of the tungsten dart!

The last reason I believe them to be Unicorn darts is because when I acquired them they came in the below case, which says Unicorn on the top.  This is no silver bullet however (second favorite dart pun :), because darts get rehoused in different cases all the time.  I have done it myself more times than I can shake a stick at, and these darts have had a long life thus far to have been rehoused.  That said, the darts do fit pretty perfectly in the case.

So there you have it.  Anyone ho has any informations on this dart please feel free to contribute!

17 gram Voks Javalins

These sweeties are a nice little dart. I have not maxed with them yet, but they feel real nice coming off my hand at the oche.  They are a 17 gram version of the Voks Javelin style "Fulcrum" dart, although when I bought them they were not labeled "Javelin" in any way so as far as I am concerned they are a one-off creation that may not fit in the Javelin line.  Furthermore, the metal they are made out of seem a heck of a lot darker, than shiny new nickel tungsten, and their size doesn't seem to match their weight, so they may not be tungsten at all.

These are the points. They seem to be industry standard movable points:

30 gram Copper Tanks

"Tanks" is the name given to these dart by my teammates. I have no idea what they really are.