Combining meshes in game without loosing boneWeights

So I have a simple cylinder that has a single bone in it.

I want to combine two of these end to end, but have the boneweights remain the same. So it ends up looking like this. I want the objects to be connected, but to still be controlled by the bones. This needs to happen in game.

Allowing the end result to look like this.

I have successful combined the mesh filters using this code.

[code=CSharp] using UnityEngine; using System.Collections;

 [RequireComponent(typeof(MeshFilter))]
 [RequireComponent(typeof(MeshRenderer))]
 public class ExampleClass : MonoBehaviour {
     void Start() {
         MeshFilter[] meshFilters = GetComponentsInChildren<MeshFilter>();
         CombineInstance[] combine = new CombineInstance[meshFilters.Length];
         int i = 0;
         while (i < meshFilters.Length) {
             combine[i].mesh = meshFilters[i].sharedMesh;
             combine[i].transform = meshFilters[i].transform.localToWorldMatrix;
             meshFilters[i].gameObject.active = false;
             i++;
         }
         transform.GetComponent<MeshFilter>().mesh = new Mesh();
         transform.GetComponent<MeshFilter>().mesh.CombineMeshes(combine);
         transform.gameObject.active = true;
     }
 }[/code]

This will combine the two objects, but remove the bone weights, so the bones no longer have control of the mesh.

I would really appreciate any suggestions someone might have. Either technically or more just in a general sense.

Should I worry about about combining the skinned mesh renderers? Or leave those separate and work on combining the mesh filters?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.