DALTON OF THE WEEK - BONES

The twenty - first Dalton of the Week is the Bones. The first information on the Bones, along with a scan, was released on April 17, 2003. The Bones has a wide spearpoint blade with about a 70 percent length unsharpened upper swedge. The edge of the swedge is beveled, which gives it the appearance of being sharpened - but it is not sharp. The T-6061 aluminum handle on the first pieces were skeletonized and the overall shape of the handle is similar to the Titanium handled UCP 8, of which only a handful were made in the mid-nineties. Here is a picture of one of the earlier Proto Bones:



Here is a rear view showing the pocket clip and the "USA" stamp on the blade:



While the Bones was in production, the Daltons received a new stenciling machine to add blade markings. They did a fair amount of experimenting with the stenciler, adding a skull-and-crossbones (Jolly Roger) stencil and changing the Dalton logo to one with "DALTON" printed above the normal logo shield and "COMBAT CUTLERY" below the shield. For the most part, the Jolly Roger was added to the side of the blade opposite the logo, but in some cases, it was added to both sides of the blades.

Here is a picture of one with the new logo - the Jolly Roger is stenciled on the opposite side:



Here is one where the Jolly Roger was stenciled on both sides of the blade:

The dimensions of the Bones are as follows:

OAL: 8 - 3/16"
Blade Length: 3 - 1/2"
Handle Length:4 - 11/16
Blade Thickness: 0.125"
Handle thickness (excluding clip): 0.472"


The next version of the Bones that we saw had a solid handle (no skeletonizing) and was black with veins of silver and blue. There were 42 of these handle sets made with plain blades originally installed in 25 of them. The remaining pieces (17) were to be fitted with damascus blades. Here is a picture of the plain bladed version:



Of those 17 pieces, 12 were fitted with Stamascus San Mai (note 1) blades, four were fitted with Stamascus "Gator" damascus blades, and one was fitted (for Mrs. Dalton) with a Swedish Damasteel blade. One of the dealers requested that one of his veined pieces (with a plain blade) be refitted with a damascus blade. That piece was fitted with a Swedish Damasteel blade. Note that the Dalton logo and Jolly Roger on these damascus pieces were generally not stenciled onto the blades. Some had the logo stenciled on the button and some had the logo stenciled on the opposite side of the pivot. In many cases, where the logo was stenciled on the opposite side of the pivot, the Jolly Roger was stenciled on the firing button.

Here is a picture of the San Mai bladed Bones:



and a a picture of the "Gator" damascus bladed Bones:



An additional two runs (one of eight pieces and one of seven pieces) of damascus pieces were made. These utilized the original black (no veining) skeletonized handles and Swedish Damasteel blades.

Two runs of the Bones (delivered around 28 May) were special orders by PVKnife.com . Josh ordered 25 each of solid (not skeletonized) Bones in blue with the fish engraving and green with the clover engraving. These are basically the same engravings as used on the Slim SEALs made back in 2000. Here are pictures of each:

Towards the end of the production run two additional variants were made. One variant was a run of seven pieces with full satin blades and the second was a run of ten pieces with a "utility blade" without the upper swedge. Here are pictures of these variants:

The production counts for the Bones:

312 Bones with skeletonized black handles (297 plain blade and 15 Damasteel)
24 Bones with solid and veined handles with plain blades
12 Bones with solid and veined handles with San Mai blades
4 Bones with solid and veined handles with Gator damascus blades
2 Bones with solid and veined handles with Damasteel blades
25 Blue Fish

25 Green Clover

7 Bones with skeletonized black handles and full satin blades

10 Bones with skeletonized black handles and utility blades

Note 1 : San Mai - A laminated steel. In this case it is a layer of random pattern damascus steel forge welded to each side of a non-damascus steel. The appearance of these blades leads me to believe that they were polished to some extent.


Many thanks to the Daltons for providing the details and the numbers for this DOTW!!