How-To Guides
Everything you need to start throwing well and make smart kit decisions — written for real beginners and improving players.
Dartboard Height, Throw Distance and the Diagonal That Squares Them
Steel-tip: centre of the bull 5 ft 8 in (1727 mm) above the finished floor, throw line 7 ft 9¼ in (2369 mm) back from the board face, and the bull-to-oche diagonal 9 ft 7⅜ in (2930 mm). Soft-tip keeps the same height but moves the throw to 8 ft (2438 mm), which pushes the diagonal to 2988 mm. Measure the diagonal last and treat it as the check digit on the other two.
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What Weight Darts Should You Use? Stamped Barrel Weight vs Bench-Weighed Assembled Weight
Most adults settle between 21 g and 24 g stamped, but that stamp is not the dart. In steel-tip it covers the barrel and its point only; add a shaft and flight and the assembled mass lands 0.6-2.0 g higher. Soft-tip stamps the complete dart, so a 22 g soft-tip and a 22 g steel-tip barrel are roughly a gram and a half apart before you throw anything.
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Barrel Cuts Ranked by Grip Aggression: Knurl, Shark, Ring and Micro Under the Calipers
Grip cuts differ by two measurable things: how deep the groove is and how far apart the grooves sit. Depths run from 0.00 mm on a smooth barrel to around 0.45 mm on an aggressive shark cut, with pitch between 0.35 mm and 3.0 mm. Deeper and coarser means more hold and a dirtier release; shallower and finer means a cleaner release and less to hang on to.
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Steel Tip vs Soft Tip: What Actually Changes, Down to the Gram
Steel-tip darts have a fixed or replaceable metal point and are stamped by barrel weight; soft-tip darts have a moulded plastic tip and are stamped by the mass of the complete dart. Steel goes into sisal only, soft goes into electronic segment holes only, and the two are not interchangeable without conversion points that add roughly 0.6-1.0 g to the front of the dart.
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Flight Shapes by Surface Area: What Each One Does to the Back End
Flight shapes differ by measured face area, from around 24 cm² for a standard down to about 13 cm² for a super slim. More area means more drag and more stability, a flatter arrival angle and a wider stack in the board. Less area means the dart carries further and faster and forgives less. Mass differences between shapes are tiny — 0.12 g to 0.20 g at 100 micron — so the behaviour is almost all aerodynamic.
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Shaft Lengths in Millimetres, and Where Each One Moves the Balance Point
Named shaft lengths run from about 27 mm (extra short) to about 64 mm (extra long), with medium at roughly 48 mm — but brands vary by ±2 mm at every step. On a 22 g reference barrel, going from extra short to extra long moves the balance point 2.4 mm further back in absolute terms while grading it 9.2 percentage points further forward, because you have added 37 mm of length behind it.
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Darts Checkout Chart: Every Finish From 170 Down, With a Second Route
170 is the highest checkout on the board — treble 20, treble 20, bullseye — and 110 is the highest you can do in two darts. Seven scores between 2 and 170 cannot be finished in three darts under any combination: 169, 168, 166, 165, 163, 162 and 159. Below 111 the question stops being which route and starts being which double it leaves you on.
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Darts Cricket Rules, Scored Out on a Real Board Turn by Turn
Cricket uses seven targets: 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and the bull. Three marks close a number, and a single counts one, a double two, a treble three. Once you have closed a number your opponent hasn't, every further hit banks its face value, and you only win when all seven are closed and your score is level with or ahead of theirs.
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Sisal, Bristle and Electronic Boards Compared on Density, Wire Gauge and Bounce-Outs
Bristle and sisal are the same board. Both words describe compressed sisal fibre banded in steel, and every 'bristle' board sold today is a sisal board. The genuine fork is sisal versus coiled paper versus an electronic plastic-segment board, and the properties that decide it are fibre grade, the width of wire presented to the point, and how much noise the thing makes at three metres.
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Behind the Board: Sizing Wall Protection From Where Stray Darts Actually Land
Cover a zone roughly 1200 mm wide by 1300 mm tall centred on the bullseye, and put a mat on the floor for the strip below it. A standard EVA surround only reaches about 120-150 mm past the board's edge, which catches the near misses and nothing beyond them. The scatter is taller than it is wide, so a square backboard wastes material in the corners and runs out of height where you need it.
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Bounce-Outs: A Symptom-to-Cause Table for Points, Board and Throw
The sound tells you which department to look in. A sharp metallic ping is a spider strike and belongs to the board's wire gauge. A dull thud with the dart at the foot of the wall is the segment refusing the point, which is nearly always a blunt or burred tip, a compacted bed or a dart arriving nose-up. Diagnose first, because the three fixes have nothing to do with each other.
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Dartboard Maintenance: Rotation Intervals and Board Life by Hours Played
Rotation is the whole job, and most people do it wrong: lift the number ring off, turn the board one or two segments, then refit the ring with the 20 back at the top. Do that every 6 to 10 hours of play at home and weekly if you're in a league. Hold the room between roughly 45 and 60 percent relative humidity and a good sisal board will give you 500 to 800 hours before the 20 bed gives up.
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