Darts
Darts
Dissecting a dart
Darts are made up of four major parts: a point, a barrel, a shaft and a flight. The barrels are the main body and come in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. Flights and shafts are replaceable and the various sizes and shapes help tailor the dart to an individual’s playing style. When a dart is thrown, air resistance and gravity affect the flight pattern. A properly balanced dart will fly true and track to the board with very little wobble.
Dart Materials
Darts come in a variety of materials, weights and grips. The most common metals used in the production of darts are brass, nickel silver and tungsten. Brass is inexpensive and is perfect for the home recreational player and the occasional pub game. Nickel Silver has the same attributes of brass but is tarnish resistant. Tungsten is extremely dense, three times denser than brass & nickel silver, and is popular because of its weight to size ratio resulting in a heavier weight in a smaller mass. If two barrels, one made of brass and one made of tungsten, the same weight were compared you would see that the tungsten barrel is 3 times smaller than the brass barrel. These important features make tungsten the material of choice for the more serious dart shooter.
Dart Weights
Steel tip darts are measured by weighing the point and barrel without the flight and shaft. Although darts are available in a wide range of weights (from 18 – 40 grams), the majority of players play with darts weighing 18 – 23 grams when using brass and 23 – 26 grams when using tungsten darts. The legal weight limit of your major overseeing organizations is 50 grams.
Soft tip darts are measured by weighing the entire dart including the barrel, flight and shaft. The weights being used to play soft tip darts are most commonly 16, 18 and 20 grams and are much lighter than their steel tip counterparts. Originally, soft tip darts needed to be light in weight because the electronic matrix in the vending machine was delicate and couldn’t withstand the impact of a heavy dart. The technology has been greatly improved over the years and the dart weights have increased steadily from the original 12 grams to the current top weight of 20 grams.
Dart Barrel Shapes
There are a number of barrel shapes that can affect your grip and flight pattern. The maximum length accepted, by the major overseeing organizations, of a dart for competition is 12 inches. Most darts don’t approach this length (most fall between 5 – 7 inches including flight & shaft) because if a dart were too long there would be excessive wobble making the dart difficult to control. When being manufactured, darts that weigh 25 grams or greater maintain a maximum length and increase in circumference instead of continuing to elongate when produced.
Dart Barrel Grips
Darts come in a variety of shapes and grips and is another way that darts can be customized to the individual. Knurling provides the most grip options with placement on the front of the barrel, the rear of the barrel, the entire barrel and innovative combinations of knurling and grooves like the Harrows Graflite. The various grip types allow the player confident finger placement that is both consistent and tactile.
The common grip styles include:
Retractable Point Darts
Moveable or retractable point dart sets have the added advantage of dramatically reducing bounce-outs and are available only in steel tip darts. These darts are specially made with the front end of the dart drilled out to except a collar and point with enough room for the point to act like a piston (moving in and out). This major innovation revolutionized the dart barrel and the industry when it was introduced over 30 years ago. The advantage happens when a dart hits a wire the point retracts and lifts slightly and the energy from the darts forward thrust forces the point past the wire into the board resulting in a scoring dart. Depending on the point design some darts, like the “Power Point”, will rotate on the point allowing for fewer deflections and tighter groups much like that of the “Top Spin” shaft.