Before I get into the nitty-gritty, let me just say this:
This is not meant to be a guide and more a reflection on my time and the experiences I’ve had with what this particular settlement location builds. Guides in general are a tough thing with KD:M for me and whilst a little guidance is without a doubt helpful for discovering interesting strategies ever so often, I would encourage you to just give stuff a try and don’t blindly follow the generalized input from the internet or any one person.
Don’t over-optimize – try stuff out! Have fun with it!
Case and point for me: some of my overall favorite weapons in the game are typically labelled as “too expensive” and you “should never build them” from what I have gathered over the last year.
I also may or may not utter guide-like statements at times when going through the items, I would suggest you do not take them as such.
You have been warned!

If you have played any amount of the KD:M early game you know this place quite well. It’s the very first settlement location that gives you the ability to make weapons and so far has been a staple location in all available major campaigns. Built from a single endeavor at each of the central settlement locations, it is a bargain to set up and lets you make those all-important scrub-tier weapons to set you up for success!

I do intend to have a look at all gear-related settlement locations eventually, talking about my personal experience with the items they produce in turn.
For separate expansions, I would consider it “poor form” to just go ahead and post everything in image form, but for the Core game at the very least, I don’t see any issue, especially with how long it has been available for at this point.
All the Core locations and cards will be Version 1.6.

Overall it should also be mentioned that weapons from the Bone Smith will mostly be considered during the VERY early years of any given campaign and thus a lot of my comments will be aimed at a LY1 situation. After the settlement has gained its first monster-themed crafting locations most of these weapons will not be built thereafter regularly (and perhaps, should not be built).

We’ll start off with the first dagger and sword options for our survivors: the Bone Dagger and the Bone Blade.

Bone Dagger – cost: 1 bone resource
3/7+/1 – 1 left-red and 1 top-red affinity piece
This weapon also has the ability to gain you +1 survival for every perfect hit you score whilst attacking with it (this has since been refined into a keyword on newer gear post 1.6: Persistence X.)
The Bone Dagger is a bit of an outlier. Between the affinities, lacking Frail and the Persistence effect, the dagger tends to see decent amount of play in my play-group, and gets semi-frequently built in later Lantern Years as an accessory. It offers a decent back-up plan for either the Rawhide Armor should they run out of Survival, or to to help with the White Lion Armor set’s affinities.

Bone Blade – cost: 1 bone resource
2/6+/2 – Frail – 1 left-red affinity piece
This is probably the most basic weapon there is and easily one of the worst ones, mainly due to being Frail, the bane of bone weapons far and wide. Super-Dense hit locations aren’t too common in monster decks even on higher levels, but even just 1 of them will (overly?) sour these weapons for a lot of players. I would also argue that Frail on a weapon that costs but a single bone is a lot less terrible then on a weapon built from, let’s say.. Phoenix resources.
Without much of the utility the other bone weapons offer, I only personally tend to prefer the Bone Blade to the Bone Dagger because I prefer Sword Specialization/Mastery over the Dagger counterpart. It should also be mentioned that you can get Bone Blades fairly regularly from certain terrain.

Bone Axe – cost: 1 bone and 1 organ,
At 2/6+/3 – Frail, Savage – 1 left-red affinity
This is my personal favorite weapon of the bone-tier. Because it costs not only a bone but also an organ whilst it still has Frail, it is often times deemed too expensive by the wider player base, but I would argue the weapon easily makes up for it in an environment without early Super-Dense, i.e. when fighting White Lions or Frogdogs.
And then there is the Savage keyword as well, of course – making it deal an extra wound on any critical hit. Despite the higher price of admission this weapon will help you chew through QN1 monsters with ease with its 3 STR and as long as you are able to avoid the lope’s teeth, QN2 as well. The unga-bunga is strong with this one, especially once Axe Specialization starts coming online as well.
If I have the resources to spare for the axe, I will typically build one.

Bone Darts – cost: 1 bone
1/7+/3 – Frail, Range:6 – 1 left-red affinity piece.
Hitting hard when you manage to hit, these darts are our first ranged option for the game. This makes them not only a versatile weapon overall, but also very important for countering the Core game’s White Lion in particular (*cough* Ground Fighting). They will also be helpful against Frogdogs jumping back and forth between Mammoth Leaves or to catch up with just about any monster that keeps backing off.
Especially if you are playing with the White Lion, I would suggest you build Bone Darts every time in the first year to counter some of the monster’s worse moods in particular.
The thing that hurts this weapon the most is the lack of a Proficiency for it. But as the game continue to be developed, with CoD just beyond the horizon, who knows, maybe we’ll see a non-beta/event one at some point.

Bone Club – cost: 3 bones
2/6+/5 – Cumbersome – 1 left-red and 1 right-red affinity pieces.
The favored child of the Bone Smith. Comparing it directly to the axe, nobody seems to complain about the 3 bones needed for this weapon, despite it also having a significant drawback as it is Cumbersome as a melee weapon.
Despite my personal gripes with it, it is a decent weapon and a good club overall as soon as the settlement has access to Dash. If you get a hit in it will very likely do some damage, but getting that hit in is the real problem to begin with. Of course any armor providing the wearer with a maneuver like Pounce of Slam will also circumvent this issue.
This is probably the only Bone Smith weapon you will be building even a little later on during a campaign, as due to the nature of Club Proficiency this weapon has a chance to stay relevant all the way till late-game.
It probably should also be mentioned that it is a two-handed weapon and could be deactivated if the survivor carrying it loses an arm.

Skull Helm – cost: 2 bone OR 1 Skull
3 armor points for the head location – armor – 1 down-red affinity
This is a bit of a weird one as I feel the more you know the game the less you are inclined to build it. 3 armor can save you from a lot of hurt, but most of the times you either want that Skull for something else or you’d rather have a different piece of head armor on your survivor. And as it will break upon taking any severe head injury you could just lose it randomly if your survivor suffers, let’s say Blind from an event or reaction.
It is also fragile, which might break during events.
(I don’t like being overly negative about keywords like this, as I think the frequency with which stuff like flammable or soluble – or fragile for that matter – are triggered is blown way out of proportion. But maybe this is just me being a Luck-Vampire again.)

As soon as we have access to Ammonia (I), as well as a Leatherworker to make Leather at, we also can build these two tools for 1 bone and 1 Leather each.

Bone Pickaxe
1/8+/2 – 1 top-green affinity piece
It adds Mineral Gathering to the hunt board.

Bone Sickle
1/8+/1 – 1 top-green affinity piece
It adds Herb Gathering to the hunt board.

Both of these tools are staple support items in the mid-game, helping you to gain important additional resources from their respective events. The Pickaxe in particular is one of the most frequently used methods to gain additional Iron, and you likely want to make an effort to put at least one of these into your set up around the mid-game if your later game relies on Iron.

Finally, arguably the most important things the Bone Smith builds:

Weapon Crafter. – cost: 3 bones, 1 hide and 1 endeavor
You ticket into the future! Tech up towards the mid-game power level!

And that should cover all of the Bone Smith.
As far as hot-takes go, I doubt any of mine are considered more than lukewarm.

In a LY1 situation, I will typically try to first assess if I can afford to innovate. Afterwards, for weapons my flowchart is Bone Darts > Bone Axe > Bone everything-else

Again, these are my personal insights I gathered from spending time with the game and are not meant to be a guide. Guides often times discourage exploration by giving out easy answers. This is not what I want to do. The further we get into the locations the more often I will also not be able to give my complete opinions as well, because I haven’t played with the items enough, or at all.
But I will leave it at that for now. Feel free to comment on your own experiences. I will be returning with Azure Pond and the Skinnery soon-ish.

As always thank you very much for your time, the Feline Entity is watching!
Amathul