Darts - Equipment

A dartboard and a few darts are needed to get started with the game, but these two things have also many subparts that a player should be well acquainted off. Let’s have a brief look on them.

Dart Board

A fine quality board consists of sisal fibers or boar bristles and cork. An 18 inch diameter board is divided into 20 sections. Thin metal structures are used to design the dividing lines and with the same materials the numbers are designed. Sometimes the manufactures opt for printing number formats. The board should be positioned on the wall in such a manner that the bull’s eye should be 5ft 8 inch above the floor.

There must be a marking line behind which the player will stand. That line should be at a distance of 7 feet and 9.25 inches from the face of the Dart board. These are the standard distances but rounding off distance is often used by the people in the matches other than tournaments.

The wires and staples that are fixed on the board are known as spiders. They are generally made up of thin steels so a normal dart cannot penetrate them. In case the dart hits the spiders it will bounce back and the player will get no points. To solve this issue many manufactures now days are imprinting these spiders inside the board and some are going for electronic dart board.

In recent years, these electronic dart boards have become more popular. The biggest advantage is that you no need to see the score manually. The sensor will does the duty of that. Earlier electronic boards have the disadvantage of not able to use steel darts on them but now with the advanced technology this problem has reduced.

Precision and accuracy is much needed when it comes to professional competition and here the electronic dart board comes in to the picture more often.

Darts

The four main parts of a dart are −

The point
The shaft
The grip
The flight

These four parts helps the player to handle the dart to get good throwing results. A dart can be made up of either wooden or brass or tungsten. Sometimes Nickel silver type darts are also used. Depending upon your level of comfort you can choose the dart. However; we will also discuss about the process of choosing a dart in this article.

The point

It can be either fixed or movable. The tip is usually soft but can be made up of steel sometimes.
Fixed points are popular, but they often bounce back due to spiders.
The movable point overcomes this disadvantage by retracting itself from the spiders just before its contact.
The back side of the dart is so designed to give necessary momentum to hit the target.
Steel darts provide more sharp teeth than that of the soft tip.

The Shaft

The part of a dart which the player uses to hold before throwing helps the player to get good grip.
The materials used for the construction of the shaft are generally plastic or aluminium or the combination of both.
The biggest disadvantage with plastic is that it produces crack when gets hit with the board very hardly but same is not the case with aluminium which is why aluminium darts cost little bit more than plastics do.
These days, spinning darts are very much popular. They tend to spin while being thrown, to prevent it from getting damaged.

The grip

While throwing the dart, the grip is very much important in giving a hard push.
Better control over the dart comes from better hold and that is what the purpose of grip over here.
Grip design may vary from person to person as they know better which design will make them comfortable while handling a dart.

The Flight

It is nothing but the fin like structure that has been put at the back side of the dart.
It is usually made up of feathers but nowadays, manufactures are putting nylon and polyester materials while designing it.
Flight serves the purpose of giving a perfect drag to the dart so that it can sail smoothly in the air towards its target.
The player should practice with different flights on the dart to know which one suits him better.