Darts Tag's Archives
The electronic dart board is definitely a hit, especially for home users as they are safer than the old style darts thanks to the soft tip darts used in the game. The soft tips are made from plastic so as not to damage the dartboard, and consequently wont damage your walls so much either. Also the maximum weight allowed is set at 20grams, which is one of the reasons the old style darters are against the new electronic game, as they prefer the heavier steel tip darts that can be used on the bristle boards. However being made of plastic has its disadvantages too, as the tips can bend or break when in use so you will need plenty of spares for them as well. Fortunately they are very cheap and easily replaced as they screw into the barrel so can be unscrewed and replaced in seconds using a dart tool.
All the major manufacturers now produce soft tip darts, with the famous black widow darts set from Laserdarts and the devastators from Bottelsen, just to name a couple and there are a lot of convertible darts sets around which give you a set of screw in steel tips as well as soft tips, like the skinnys from Bottelsen, so you can use the same darts for both the soft tip and the steel tip games, which is neat. The skinnys also have the famous hammerhead action steel tip inserts that reduce those infamous bounce outs on the wires of the bristle boards. Also the shafts and flights for the soft tip darts are just the same as for steel tip darts.
The black widow soft tips have the spider grip aluminium shafts which are supposed to grip the flights better; four steel wires are anchored in the aluminum base and are covered with heat shrunk rubber to form a firm hold on the flight, and like a lot of the more expensive darts, you can chose from a range of weights from 16 to 20 grams and of course they have their famous spider flights; so if you are in to arachnids, these are for you. They even have a set with a gold colored finish that look really cool called Gold Widow darts, (guess what color the black widow darts are?). Bottelsen have got some great soft tip darts as well, their devastators are very popular as well as the Nemesis set, which have the Bottelsen spinning shafts.
The Piranha is one of the most popular darts in the soft tip world and comes in any weight you want from 12 up to 20 grams and has the new feature from Piranha, the Razor Grip which is an aggressive grip that helps stop any slippage when you throw. They also come with Top Spin spinning shafts that can rotate so if hit by a dart whilst in the board it spins the flight out of the way so reducing the deflection of the dart coming in.
The darts that come with the dart board sets are err&.. how can I put it, not very good, so even the cheaper Soft tip Darts at $20-$30 or so would be a great improvement on those, so if you get one of the all in dartboard sets it is definitely worth investing in a decent set of darts as well.
Boards, Dart, Darts, Electronic, Soft
The name steel tip darts has only recently been coined since the advent of the soft tip darts. Previous to the soft tip revolution, all darts were steel tipped and were simply called darts. But now there are two types of dart game, the traditional game played on Bristle dart boards with the old steel tip darts and the new electronic game that uses soft tip darts and electronic dart boards.
As the name suggests the tips of steel tip darts are steel with a sharpened point so they can stick into sisal or paper or even a wooden dart board. The steel tip has had some innovations over the years, like the Bottelsen No Bounce out darts that had the trademark Hammerhead system in the grip whereby the tip can retract slightly into the body of the dart absorbing the sharp impact if a dart hit the wire or staple on the dartboard allowing the forward momentum to push the dart past the obstacle and stick into the board.
Black widow darts had a similar system called a movable point that also had the added advantage of allowing the body of the dart to swivel around the tip achieving the same effect as spinning shafts i.e. if a dart hits the flight of a “widow” dart that is in the dart board, the barrel can rotate so moving the flight and that reduces the deflection of the dart coming into the board.
Another step forward for darts is the metal used to make the darts today. Tungsten has all but taken over as the material of choice for the body of the dart, with its superior density to traditional brass, the same weight of dart can be made much thinner, increasing the chances of getting three in a bed and that 180 score.
Apart from the tip, the body , shaft and flights are the same for both steel and soft tip. The weight of the darts is the other difference. With steel tip darts you can go all the way to 50 gm if you want, whereas soft tip darts have a 20 gm limit normally, to stop the dart damaging the electronics.
As for maintenance of your steel tips, be sure to keep the point sharp, either by rubbing the tip on some grinding paper or using the shaped carborundum stone you can get specifically to keep steel tips sharp. If you want to spend the money, there are motorised sharpeners that will sharpen your dart at just the right point angle.