One of the great things about darts is that it can be played very easily at home. The basic equipment required to play can be purchased quite cheaply and the set-up is straight forward.
It would be impossible to play a game of darts, without having a dartboard. When using steel tip darts, as the professionals do in the PDC and BDO, you need to have a bristle dartboard, which is comprised of fibers, bristles and cork. A standard bristle dartboard can be purchased in most sports shops and online. When placed on the wall, there should be 1.73 m between the bullseye and floor and the line behind which players throw, should be 2.73 m from the dartboard. When playing at home, it is best to respect these measurements, so that when you play at a pub or different venue, you are comfortable using them.
You may want to purchase a surround for the dartboard, which will protect the wall around the dartboard, from any wayward darts.
Perhaps the best way to ensure you are throwing from the correct distance every time is to use a darts mat. This already has the correct marking for the oche line and can be placed on the floor when playing and rolled up and stored away when not.
With the dartboard correctly set-up, the next item of equipment you need are the darts themselves. Darts are comprised of three main parts, the barrel, shaft and flight. The barrels come in different sizes, weights and materials, as do the shafts. The main
materials used for barrels is brass and tungsten. Shafts are commonly made from nylon and aluminum. Flights come in a wide range of shapes and colors and are usually made from nylon or polyester.
Darts will suffer from wear and tear the more you use them but it’s possible to keep the steel tips in good shape, by sharpening them. All you need for this is a sharpening stone or a sheet of grinding paper. Simply slide the tip of the dart along the
stone or paper, turning as you go, to keep the darts nice and sharp, thus ensuring they enter the dartboard easily.
When heading out to play darts, at a pub or friends house, a darts case will prove very useful. Some sets of darts will come with a case and some won’t but they are very easy to find. The best darts cases will allow the flights to remain in their throwing shape and not be removed from the dart and flattened down. A nice little addition to flights are flight savers or protectors that are placed on the end of flights to prevent them from being damaged by incoming darts.
Some players will notice, that after throwing their darts over long periods of time, the shaft of the dart will come loose from the barrel. This can be quite annoying, especially if you are in the middle of an important match. To prevent this from happening, invest
in a set of ‘O’ or shaft rings. These are made from rubber and will prevent aluminum darts shafts from becoming loose, they are a great addition to your darting equipment. If you are using nylon shafts; ring grips are the perfect thing to stop your flights
from coming loose, when flying through the air. Sometimes they can cause bounce outs, so if you notice you are starting to see more bounce outs, it may be worth removing them.
With all this equipment in place, you are ready to enjoy a great game of darts. Order now on Amazon!
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