Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The Silence is Broken

In the best possible way. Announcing some new darts. Some darts which will in fact herald quite a few new posts because when I got these, I also had a couple of sets repaired and they are begging to be blogged. So here they are:


And for that matter, I think these are the finest darts I have ever seen. I took them out tonight for the first team practice and I did pretty well with them for being new to me. I was hot on the doubles and I hit a hat trick, at least one ton and sprinkled several treble 20's throughout the night.

About the darts: These are darts of my own design which I hired a master lathesman to lathe for me. I had two sets made. One for me and one for my good dart pal in my old city. I call them, as a model name, Dagnabits. So the official catalogue line item description of these darts would be:

"24 Gram Fixed Point Dagnabits, Smooth Finish."

It is hard to tell from the photo unless you zoom in on it, that the barrels are actually tapered, but it is a very subtle taper. The barrels are a full two inches long, and the alloy is 90% tungsten. They were drilled a bit to make them exactly 24 grams.

13 comments:

Tommo said...

Great to see you blogging again. Those darts seem incredibly smooth, so be sure to let us know what the grip is like.

Anonymous said...

I've never tried a smooth dart before. I am also curious as to what the grip is like. With a smooth barrel do you find it hard to keep the same finger placement between throws?

Who is the manufacturer of those darts. Weight?

I am currently throwing some Pete Morrison Terminators. Here is a picture.

http://www.jrmcvicker.com/Darts/PM%20Darts/PM_upclose.jpg

Zeeple said...

The grip is terrific. My grip is always consistent because I place my forefinger just barely on the point of the dart, and so I do not need rings or grooves to tell me I am holding the dart correctly. Also, rings and cuts and knurling etc, I always felt that there were "micro-snags" as skin particles caught in the texture as the dart leaves the hand. Smooth darts don't have that prob. They leave my hand very smoothly.

Zeeple said...

mcvikj: your link is broken. I get a 404 when I try to go there...

Anonymous said...

Fixed. I was in the process of switching hosting companies. If you backup into directory you can see a few other pictures. I'm working on getting a gallery setup.

Zeeple said...

mcvickj, I looked at all your pictures. I have to say those mystery darts are a nice looking set. Did I ever show you the Unicorn Archives? You can look at all of their catalogues in the form of PDF's going back several decades. You might just find those darts in their pages somewhere. The trouble is that it is slow loading, even with DSL. It would be cool if there were a way to download all of those pdf's to my computer at night so I can look at them from my hard drive.

Anonymous said...

Dartdwarf here from Seattle. Was the second set give to an old friend in Seattle? If they were, I'd like to know who it is so I can see them.

Anonymous said...

Nice ecdo plaque on the shelf.

Dartdwarf

Zeeple said...

Hi DartDwarf, thanks for the comments. The ECDO plaque is the only one I have and thus I display it prominently. It was the first trophy I'd won since high school 15 years prior.

And the darts were indeed for an old friend in Seattle, and if you are in the dart circuit there you may know him. Let's see if we can give some clues without saying his name in the blog.

His name is also on that ECDO Plaque. An identical Plaque hangs on the wall in my old dart bar in Lake City. It is for B League, first place. That should get you there.

Some people who know me follow my blog so it isn't as if my identity is a secret, but I consider it impolite to blog other people's names and unsafe to blog my own. Drop me an email or a private message in one of the dart forums and we can shoot some games next time we are in Seattle. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the reply. I am curious to see you design. I will be stopping by Cooper's for a great pizza soon. I hope I am not crossing the line by mentioning Cooper's and there great pizza. They haven't had an A league team in some time. I like playing there for the set up and the food. Tarasco's is also good place to play for the food. Have a great day and toss lots of tons.

Dartdwarf

Zeeple said...

Dartdwarf, if you PM me your real name and contact ino, say at dartplaer.net, I'll put my friend in touch with you. Perhaps the two of you can go play somemtime. Perhaps you already know each other. And yes, Coopers has terrific food and great selection of beers. Coopers may be the best dart bar in the Northwest. Never had their pizza though.

Anonymous said...

Hey Rob...first time posting here at your blog. Nice looking set of darts...hope you didn't pay too much for them since they would have been sooo easy to make...Did I ever tell you in a former life I was a CNC machinest? Wish I still had the equipment available to me I could turn out loads of darts.

Zeeple said...

You never told me that! I am thinking about getting one of those CNC lathes. I would sure love to try out some of the designs I am thinking of without paying someone else to make them. I think that is the next step for me, but I don't have the grand to slap down at this point.