Dart Collections Online

Just wanted to bring your attention to a few different dart collections I have seen out there. The first collection belongs to Juergen who is a frequent commenter on this blog (and who also keeps track of his maximums). He has some really stunning darts and he apparently has quite a good camera. As you can see from his collection, too, he has a tendency to stick with the basic barrel designs that work for him, whereas I do not. Which may be why he has 115 Ton-80's this year and I only have 20!! Click the picture below to go to his page:



The other collection belongs to a darts enthusiast who also has quite a good board collection as well. In fact his dartboard collection is surely the envy of every dart collector out there with the possible exceptions of Christian and Beni Petris. However, this post is about dart collections so I will not link to his boards just yet. Alan has a really nice collection of antique darts, unusual darts as well as the occasional modern dart that he throws in competition. Again, click on the picture to go to his collection:

A Brave New World

These darts are my newest addition and I got them in a trade with crashfromboston. I sent him my 27 gram GT3's and he sent me these. Unlike my temporary exchange with mcvickj, however, this is a permanent trade. I encouraged him many times to consider carefully if he really wanted to make the trade as these darts seem to be a bit rare and definitely unique but he pushed for the trade and assured me that if he ever wanted to have some New World Darts back in his collection he knew where he could get some. So HURRAY!! I love my new darts!


Seen above are the darts in my Initial Preferred Configuration. They came with some longer stems and a triangular tube of other bits and pieces but I like my Dynastuff so I decided to go with these first. I might play around a bit with them before I settle into a config though. The throw a bit awkward to be honest but I think for people who grip a dart more forward on the barrel than I do they would do quite well. They have that mid barrel depression that invites a couple of fingers but I cannot grip a dart like that comfortably so I have my index finger and thumb on the back flutage and my middle finger on the forward flutage. This is how I grip all darts though despite my many different barrel styles.

The story of these darts is a good one and I hope I get it right. And if I do not I hope crash logs in and leaves some comments to correct my version of these unique darts. Apparently there was a guy in Massachusetts who wanted to start a dart making company and called it New World Dart Co. as seen in the label below. He attempted to patent many of his ideas but met with little success as the many of his ideas have been already patented by other entities. But his ideas were definitely unique and I have never ever seen any darts like these before. The label you see below is on the front of the large case that darts came in.


As you can see from the picture below the darts are designed with a brass outer sleeve that have 2ba threading on the stem end and different threading up front. The point is attached to a tungsten insert that slides into the brass sleeve and then screws into place. Oddly, though he did not make this 2ba. Nor is it 1/4" threading. If he had made the forward threading either of these sizes he could have made this a convertible dart. A light brass soft tip dart or, a steel tip dart with a tungsten insert to make it just a little bit heavier for steel tip play. Unfortunately this is not the case and so the darts are a fixed 22 grams and steel tip only. I am willing to bet that if his fledgling company had survived the first frost he would have eventually adapted his design to accommodate both dart worlds. The key you see below, is an old Ford truck key he converted to a point chuck. Very inventive!


Seen below is the original configuration of the darts as they came to me. I have no idea how they were sold new or even how much they cost. But the medium stems are hard to use for most barrels. Only the shortest barrels can take a medium stem and I have never seen a good occasion to use a long stem. Thus, I did not keep this config.



The case is huge for a single set of darts and yet it is another instance of the creativity that went into his whole enterprise. It is a converted gun case. He cut the foam to take the three fully assembled darts, extra flight and stem combos and then there are holes for stems only, a long triangular tube. some slots for some unopened flights, and the place where he put the ford key-chuck. I of course will preserve this as is with all of the contents because it is now a piece of darting history. But the darts themselves, will likely live in a little wooden stand near my dartboard for casual throwing.

All in all I am very happy with this trade and I wish I could make similar trades with some of the darts I have that I do not like as much. That was not my feeling with the GT3's though. Those GT3's really held a very special place in my heart as they were purchased used, and modified by Jeff Pickup to take a screw in stem. I really liked those GT3's. Also, they threw extremely well. I never ton-80'd with them but I have lots of good games with them all the same.

Dardi, chiunque?

Wow. Dart blogs are popping up all over the internet and the latest look about reveals a few that I would like to point out for everyone's benefit. "Dardi, chiunque?", according to my very good friend Google Translation, means "Darts, anyone?" in Italian... Yep you guessed it: time to brush up on your Italian reading skills so you can enjoy the following dart blog:


This blog, as soon as I saw it went straight to the top of my dart blogs bookmarks. Looks like this blogger posts some really good content including some videos. I look forward to similar quality content in the future. The only catch is that I do not speak Italian. But I speak Spanish, so I am confident that I can pick up written Italian in no time at all. After all, I already know the subject matter, right?

First SEWA Ton-80: 20th Lifetime

This is the first Ton-80 I have hit with any darts wearing my new Team SEWA flights (and my 20th lifetime maximum to date). For give the funky camera angle I wanted to make sure the Team SEWA flights were prominently displayed. It really is the 20 bed and not the 12 bed:


I am quite happy about it. The story of how I got the Team SEWA flights is a nice one too, but is best reserved for a future post. Cheers!

Nineteen's a Pretty Number

Or maybe it's just the darts that are pretty. I hit Ton-40's galore this last week while I was visiting Seattle, more than I remember ever hitting in a single week. I wish I'd kept count. Monday through Friday I was using my friend's darts and was doing well no matter what I was throwing. But it wasn't until I was back home that I hit my nineteenth ton-80:


These darts are 30 gram Bottelsen Original Hammerheads. I bought them mid way through a Luck from a bar owner in Seattle and unfortunately didn't win a single game after that! What was I thinking??? This is what I was thinking: Once I picked them up I immediately threw a Ton-40. Then another. Then I told the bar owner I would buy them (committed) and I threw three more Ton-40's while we were waiting for the other half of the luck to finish up their games. It was like I couldn't miss.

I don't know where my ton-plus scores went after the luck entered the final-four stage (we ended up taking fourth) but the darts seems to still be working for me. When I was evaluating the darts, I knew immediately what they were model-wise. After all I've seen the Hammerhead originals on the internet hundreds of times and I knew I liked Hammerhead darts and I think Bottelsen is a terrific dart maker. I casually glanced at the model number and saw it started with 23... which means the darts were supposed to be 23 grams. Since this put them within my acceptable grammage I decided that maybe I would buy them. When I got home I found that they were 30 grams! Whoa! Wait a minute. I have firmly believed for some time now that anything over 24 grams was not likely to provide sustainable performance but here I am throwing my 19th lifetime Ton-80 with a whopping 30 gram set of darts.

Whodathunkit? So 19 is definitely a pretty number. Here's a thought: perhaps it is good I did not count my ton-40's in Seattle. This way I can assume I tossed 19 of them.

DynaDag Reconfiguration

After a couple of weeks of playing with the DynaDags and have mostly mediocre success, I have decided to make a few changes to them. I have swapped out the really long points Jeff Pickup put on them with some really short ones I bought a while back from somewhere online. I then put on some longer Proline stems and changed from the Pear shaped flights to the slightly smaller Slim Flights, otherwise known as "Coal Cracker". Check them out:


I had had some minor success with the other config as well but I think the longer points and the shorter stems reduced the forward weightedness of the dart too much. I found myself lobbing the darts instead pushing them and they started ending up with a high up angle in the board. Despite all the talk of the longer points benefiting the hitting of the triple ring I think I prefer shorter points for my tapered darts. I shall test that, anyway, in the weeks to come. If I change my mind I can always pout different points in them as that is easy to do.

Keyless Conversion

No, that's not an SSH option.


Rather, it is a method of converting your MP darts to FP without anyone being the wiser.

The DynaDag

My newest creation, implemented by the talented Jeff Pickup in Canada's Ontario Province, is officially dubbed the DynaDag. "Dyna" because it was designed for exclusive use with Dynastar flights, and "Dag" because it is a member of the Dagnabit family of darts.


Here they are pictured with the short Proline stems and red pear shaped Dynastar flights. The points are longer than I normally wear them and I am considering swapping them out for some short points but I wanted to give these a go for a few league nights to see how they perform. There is a lot of talk on the forums about longer points and how they can help you squeeze more darts into the trebles (as if I need help with that! Sheesh!).

The barrels themselves are 75% Copper Tungsten which took a long time for Jeff to get but was well worth it. The lower tungsten percentage allows for a fuller body without making the dart too heavy. It is completely smooth with just a friction-fit hole to take a fixed point and a tiny threaded hole designed for the Proline stems. The Barrel is 2" long and 9/32" wide at its widest point.

The stems you can buy anywhere but I got them from www.a-zdarts.com, which is where I buy most of my darts supplies. They are designed for Pro-Line's line of soft tip darts but they sell 2ba adapters for them as well. The flights are Dynastar, and you can get those absoultely anywhere. I hope the new owners of the line do not do anything bad with them, if so I will have to stock up!!

First 9 Count with DynaDags

Doing a round of triples practice I aimed for, and hit, three triple 19s:


Normally such a shot includes at least one lucky slop shot but not this time. This is a true to like round of nine. Now.. On to the 18s...

I Was the Geek (18th Max)

Tonight in league I personally did so-so but during warm up I did hit my 18th lifetime Ton-80. I was very happy about it for a couple reasons but first, if you are wondering how I got this shot of it...


Yes, I was the geek taking a picture of the dartboard!

So what were the cool things about this particular ton-80? Well for starters, I ton-80'd with this very set of darts, configured for soft tip, so that make it the only set of darts I have ever maximumed with on both steel tip and plastic tip boards. I don't know why that is significant. It just feels significant. But also, most of my maximums have been at home practicing alone and with no witnesses. It feels nice to be able to point to the boards and say "Hey. Look what I did."

I hope next time the Ton-80 comes in an actual match.

Also tonight I doubled in on the double bull in a DIDO 401 game. We lost the game but the 85-in on the DB sure felt nice.

17th Ton-80

Next year's new years resolution is gonna be a toughy.


These are the Dags wearing short nylons with Pear shaped dimplex flights. I was just gonna throw one of them cause it was on top of something I wanted. But when it hit the Sweet Spot I dug out the other two darts to see what would happen.

Ha! Look what happened!

16th Lifetime Ton-80

With this hit I have accomplished my first new years resolution and considering the season I better get a move on with the other ones!!



Just some sloppy practice to wind down after the final game of the Cards Padres series. I hit some scattered crap preceeding this and slowly started to zero in on the prize. These are the 16 gram Radarts I used in League so much last year and I also used them in league last Tuesday as well. I used these darts to beat the other teams best guy in a singles Chicago match.

It felt good.

My New Accudart 301's

These are some seriously sweet darts. I have been throwing them and from the get go they have been completely brilliant. The very first time I threw em I hit a double bull. (That happens to me often. I can count at least three other times in bars where I have picked up someone's darts and hit the dead center of the board. Uncanny.)



As you can see I have already configured them to my own sense of style and function. A shorter dart is better and a bigger flight for the heavier barrel. There are a couple of things I like about these darts. The first and foremost is that they were a gift from Mcvickj, with whom I trade darts occasionally. The second is that they are big thick barrels that have some real heft to em. I have been leaning toward more fuller bodied darts lately and these really fit that bill. Thirdly, take a look at the barrels. Tungsten up front Brass in the rear. That reminds me of a hair cut...

Business up front, party in the rear. Who can name that doo?

Another interesting aspect of these darts is that they are threaded 1/4" and so my stem selection is limited to what few of those I have. These black aluminum 1/4" stems work nicely however and so there is no need to fret on that one. I plan on using these in league this year. I have already hit some pretty good numbers with them in practice and the way I hold them really makes me point them at the board. I feel a little bit of the old spin creeping back into the throw too. Can't wait to see how that pans out.

F136 Darts from Unicorn

These darts disappeared from the catalogs in 1971, and the 1970 catalog has them marked as 'deleted'. There are in the earliest catalogs too, so these darts could be anywhere from 55 to 35 years old, I'd say, or older.


The Barrels are interesting. They are hexagonal, which prevent the darts from "rolling" in your hand and enforces your grip to some small degree. Here is a closeup of the Barrels.


Once I get some new feather flights for them I'll comment on how they throw...

A Tiny Piece of History

These are my new 7 gram Unicorn Extralites. New to me that is, as I bought them off ebay and that disappear out of the Unicorn cataloges sometimes in the 60's. In fact in the Unicorn online Hertiage section you can look through a lot of the old catalogs and these are in the earliest four, from 1950 to 1965. After that they disappear. Even the 1950 catalog says they have been in demand for years so I would presume they were made in the 40's and maybe 30's as well.


They are a lot lot tinier than I imagined. When I saw them on ebay it was hard to gauge the size of them properly and I figured they much bigger than they are. The below pic shows a comparison shot of one of the Extralites next to a typical modern brass dart of 21 grams. Despite the small size of them though they seem to throw pretty well so I can see why the early catalogs said they were in great demand. I have hit some good numbers with them already, missing a maximum by a wire, and cleanly hitting lots of doubles as well. Like any light dart they have a tendency to drift in flight just a bit but not so much that it is debilitating. I think these darts will make an appearance at league!


They are definitely showing their age. The flights are in _superb_ condition despite being 50 years old. The points are a bit oxidized which I am sure will be plenty correctible with sand paper, and the front of the brass barrels show some tarnishing. I am tempted to research how to clean or restor brass so I can take care of that. I am not a finger licker so I am not concerned with an lead that may be in the darts. The stem was a bit hesitant to come out so I didn't try to hard. The last thing I wanna do is snap them off inside the barrels. At least not until I get some extras. The stem threading is very very small, at 3BA, which is quite a bit smaller than the standard of the day which is 2BA. When I finally start making my own darts I may aim for such a threading.

One of my favorite things about this dart is the flight. Here is a close up shot of the flight. The design of the old style plastic flights is terrific. A single molded piece of plastic. Nothing to robin hood, the flights do not crumble and separate from the mylar like modern flights, they are durable and always square. Could you ask for more? As you can see from the pic below (and don't forget you can click on the image for a bigger version) the fins are so thin they are nearly translucent and you can see swirls of the red in the plastic. Very cool. In some of the pictures the flights seem to come out pinkish, but they are red in real life. This may be a fault of my camera.


The box was nearly destroying in shipping but I doubt it was in that good a shape to be gin with. Here are some shots of the inside of it. I wish they had dated their old products somehow. When I start to make my own I will definitely date them somehow. So 50 years from now, or 100 years from now, people will say "See this little mark? That means these darts were made in 2007 by the Master Darts Craftsman Zeeple." Hahahaha. Maybe.

Robin Wood

What a Robin Hood called when done with wooden darts? A 'Robin Wood' of course! The odd thing about this is there is nothing for a tip to get stuck in like on a regular dart. With these widdies the stem and barrel are all one piece. nonetheless, the points were sharp enough that one of them found purchase. This is by far the most unusual Robin Wood I have ever hit.

Sliced Bread

The Winmau Wall Clamp is the world of darts' version of Sliced Bread. It is seriously that awesome. I can swap between dartboard in a snap:



Here you can see it with the Unicorn Surround applied over the board. The device is so streamlined that the surround goes on without so much as a whimper.



Here is a close up of the Clamp/Surround combo.

Raymond van Barneveld Triple B Darts

Going on the recommendation of Wazza180 I decided to purchase a set of Raymond van Barneveld Triple B darts. I placed an order with http://www.9dartshop.com and they were at my door step exactly one week from the date of purchase.

When I opened up my package I was pleasantly surprised to find just more than my darts inside. 9dartshop also included two sets of flights and a Unicorn Checkout card. Certainly not expensive items but it is the little things like this that brings customers back. Nice touch. :)



The Triple B darts come with long nylon shafts, 1 set of flights and a plastic slim case. The barrel isn't as agressive as I would like but there is a nice feel to them. The length is about 1.8 inches long.



For the first few throws I decided to keep the long shafts on. Add a set of standard Ruthless RX4 flights and I was off to the board. The Triple B flew great with the long shafts. Landed in the board at a perfect angle. The only problem I ran into was the jabbing of myself in the cheek. The shafts are just too long for my throw and when I would hit my cheek the dart would slip changing my finger placement on the barrel.

Here is an upclose picture of the Triple B barrel.

15th Lifetime Ton-80

With yesterday's hit not only did I get my 15th ton-80 under my belt, I also tied my ton-80 number for last year at 6. So one more and I will have accomplished my first new years resolution for this year (to hit more ton-80's this year than last).


My favorite aspect of this particular maximum though is the fact that it came on the back of my newly discovered Unicorn Big Brass Beauties, as I am calling them. Not only did I squeeze them all in the treble but if you'll notice, there is plenty of room left over for more. In fact nearly half the treble is unobstructed. I could hit a symetrical ton-80 into the other half! (Well, okay maybe I couldn't but Steve "Magic" Coote or Paul Williams could.) I have been told by so many people that they wish their darts were skinnier or that they were looking for some skinnier darts so that they could fit in the triple 20 better. In fact it is a commonly held belief that skinnier darts have the effect of improving your average over the course of game for this reason.

I cannot help but to balk at that a little.

Afterall, the Late Great Jim Pike probably never threw a tungsten dart in his life yet he is credited with darts feats the current msters could only dream of. If it is so hard to fit modern brass darts into a treble how could he have become the legend that he is? Have you seen the darts that were commonly used in that era? There are huge by comparison yet modern brass darts still have the stigma of being too big. Listen to this story:

When I was in league in Seattle during my last season there some of our teammates did not show up for the match. One because he was mad at another teammate, one because he was lacking in the commitment department, and one because of I cannot remember. So our captain runs accross the street to a different bar to try and find a sub (we were in the Knarr). He comes back with a guy who normally plays A League, but was not on a team that season (which is the only reason he could sub). He has no darts with him so we offer to loan him some for the evening. I had my Rhino's with me, but I was using my Widows. I offer him the Rhinos (brass darts with a tungsten tip) and he looks at me like I am crazy, and says:

"No way I am not throwing those, they are way too fat."

There was no way in heck I was going to give up my Widows to this guy so someone else lent him darts, and he proceeded to throw rubbish all night, whereas I had a good evening. I cannot remember if we won or not. But I do remember that while he could not hit the red side of a barn, he did allow us to not have to forfeit, for which I am certainly grateful. However this is how I wish it had played out in hindsight, afterall my game was on, and his was off:

"No way I am not throwing those, they are way too fat." (him)
"Okay, no worries. Throw these Widows and I'll throw the Brass. Lets play a quick game to warm up." (me)

I am certain I'd have beat him. I think that the thickness of a dart may have some minor effect on hitting your triples but not that much. I'd say that nailing a Maximum is 99% ability, and maybe 1% real estate. If that. Anyway, after the match that night I hit my first ever White Horse in a game against a teammate. I was definitly on.

For those who love Accudart...

During my never ending search to find a set of Accudart Pro-Line Masters I stumbled across an Accudart lot on eBay. I’ve always been interested in anything related to Accudart. The price was right so I placed a bid on the auction. A few days later I received an e-mail saying I won the bid. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.


As you can see this was a pretty nice find. I received

• 2 - Series 301 Tungsten-Brass Darts
  
• 2 - Series 650 Brass Darts
• 1 - Series 501 Nickel-Silver Darts
• 1 - Series 501 Brass Darts
  
• 1 - Tun 80 Tungsten Alloy Darts
• 1 - The Variant Tungsten Adjustable Weight Darts
• 4 - Spare feather flights

Here is a picture of the Accudart Variant. Perhaps an idea way ahead of its time. A fun set to toss. Ideal for the tinkerer in all of us. There are 36 different ways that you can configure the weight of these darts. From 12.5 grams all the way up to 28 grams.



Here is a picture of the Accudart Tun 80. The weight is 24 grams and they are fuzz under 2 inches long. These darts fly nicely using the long shafts provided with standard flights.


More pictures of the entire Accudart package can be found on my gallery.