Darts

Darts is game that is very easy to learn , but can take a lifetime to master like all great games. The darts themselves have come a long way from the original arrows. The dart has 4 components, the tip, the barrel, the shaft and the flight.

The tip is the part that hits the board and comes in two types, steel tip and soft tip. The steel tip is the traditional tip and is used in all the big professional tournaments with a "bristle" type dartboard. Steel tip darts must be kept sharp with grinding paper or the sharpening tool which is basically a shaped grinding stone. A sharp point to the dart ensures a good penetration of the dart board.

A novel innovation to the steel tip is the retractable tip, which as the name suggests can retract slightly. This means if they hit the wire on a dart board, they retract so that the forward momentum of the dart can take the dart into the board instead of bouncing out like a normal dart. Neat eh!

The soft tips as the name implies are softer than steel and are used on the electronic dart boards and made of plastic, which means they are safer for home use, and won't make the holes in the wall that steel darts do. Some of the soft tips are notched to help them stay in the dart board better. The downside to soft tip darts are that they are more easily damaged and you must have some spares when you play. Do not play with bent tips replace them often. The soft tips usually have a 2BA thread and are easily replaced with the tool that comes with a soft tip dart set.

The barrel is the all important part of the dart. This determines the weight of the dart, and these days are usually made of tungsten. Tungsten is a very dense metal and so you can have slimmer darts with the same weight as the old brass darts. The "tungsten revolution" meant that it was possible to get better groupings than before, and the pros scores have improved considerably since the introduction of the tungsten dart.

What weight of dart do you go for? Well there is no hard and fast answer,if you look to the pros for guidance, some of them go light with 14 gram darts but Ray van Barneveld uses 26 gram darts????

If you are a beginner and using steel darts it is probably best to go heavy say 20-26 gram darts as these are less "skittish" and more forgiving than light darts and stick into the board better, but it is really up to you and what "feels" right to you

The heaviest you can go in soft tip is around 20 grams

Then there is the grip. Often this is no more than grooves in the barrel and they can be smooth or knurled or have the new edge grip on the grooves. Again its up to you which type you prefer.

The shaft for the flights should be light, so the nylon types are just fine, the aluminum sort will last longer, but can bend if dropped, just ensure they are straight! And if you want to be really flash, there are the titanium shafts which won't bend, but are expensive.

The dart flights are the colorful bits on the end of the dart. The flights come in a miriad of shapes and colors. For beginners use the larger standard flight, as it gives more stability in flight and only progress to the smaller pear shaped ones as you improve. Make sure you use the same type of flight on all 3 darts and do use flight protectors as they help keep the shape of the dart. It is important to keep the 90 degree angle between the individual parts of the flight.