dart weights

[shaun of the dart]

Hi every one,

this may sound like a stupid question but how do you tell if you can, that you need heavier or lighter darts,

ive been playing round with different sets and im unsure which set is right for me?

thanks

shaun

[rich345]

i used to think that weight was very important, but i am now pretty sure that with practice i could throw any weight really. i do try to only buy 21-23g so that weight difference is negligible. i find that if i switch from a 21g set to a 23g set it only takes a few minutes to make the adjustment. for me making sure the grip is where i need it is much more important. also i personally can only use straight barrels

[shaun of the dart]

Thanks, i recently bought some new darts as the ones i had previously were probably about 15 years old harrow 25g eric bristows i think. The ones i bought felt a lot heavier then 23g heavy but i think that's because they are front end loaded if you know what i mean?

[rich345]

i do know what you mean. i have found darts in the past that seem lighter or heavier than their actual weight.

someone said to me once "if i give you a full brick and ask you to throw it into a bin 5 times then give you a half brick and ask you to do the same, i bet you will not be far out with either as your brain will very quickly make the adjustment for you"

Unicorn darts Uniboffin also says that weight is the least important aspect when choosing a dart.

That is not to say you will not find a dart you love and want to stick with it. I do find it takes longer for me to be comfortable with heavier darts than lighter ones. but if i found a set of 25g i loved the feel of, i am sure with a few weeks practice i would no longer notice the weight. i guess the longer you use one weight, the longer it may take to get comfy. that being said Barney mainly used 25g throughout his career, but currently he is throwing 21g and he seems to be doing very well with them.

[heppy147]

Hi Shaun, I hear what you are saying,but have to admit the type or shape of the darts is the most important. Have you found the dart that suits you? Guests cannot see images in the messages. Please register at the forum by clicking here to see images.

[shaun of the dart]

Thanks im still looking for the eight set of darts for me! I thinki want a smooth grip set but unsure whear to start as dont want o spend to much on them just incase im wrong and dont actually want a smooth grip.

[rich345]

the andy smith "pieman" darts are very good value. also the silver (not atomised) ted hankey winmau darts are fairly cheap and seem to be loved by everyone that has tried them. Another option is the Datadart Orion which are pretty much identical to the Terry Jenkins darts but around £10 less. All are available in various weights. The cheapest though may be the RD Sleex

https://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/darts-st...orion.html
https://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/darts-st...y-21g.html
https://www.dartscorner.co.uk/product_in...s_id=34018
https://www.reddragondarts.com/sec/1681/Sleex/

[shaun of the dart]

Im thinking the ted hanky ones look nice and smooth might give them a go!

[Skywalker]

Hi Shaun, I hear what you are saying,but have to admit the type or shape of the darts is the most important. Have you found the dart that suits you? Guests cannot see images in the messages. Please register at the forum by clicking here to see images.

I agree.
For me, the most important thing is the balance of the dart, which is mostly determined by it's shape. I don't feel the difference after a few minutes with a different weight dart. I have a 27 g (I don't use anymore), three 25 g (one I love) and two 22 g (the ones I play the most nowadays).
When I'm playing well, I can play with all of them. My flaws appear constantly and equally doesn't matter the dart I'm playing with.
I believe it's part of the process to buy a few sets until you find the one you really feel comfortable with. When you find it, I would suggest you to stick with it and do not be carried away by the idea that another dart will make you play better. It will not. Practice will. A lot of it.

[mcockrell]

first off let me say that I have very limited experience with darts and even less with different weights or styles. furthermore, I am not that great of a player. but after buying a few sets of darts with different grips and different weights I can tell you that even at my level I have found that after throwing them for just a few minutes I can throw most darts pretty close to the level that I do with my normal darts. im certainly not perfect with them but I think that's only because I use one set 99% of the time so I am far more used to them.

for me my heavier darts (24g which are my usual darts) will give me a good bit of error correction. as long as I use a smooth throwing motion and get the dart pointed in the right direction from the beginning it will stay true. that being said sometimes with those darts i will tend to miss high or low. my aim will be spot on but the release point is a bit harder to get consistent.

i started off on lighter darts (16g conversions and a set of 18g ones that i picked up on clearance for my wife) and i had trouble with them sticking properly. remember this was when i first started. because they didn't stick hard enough for me my brain kept telling me to throw them harder, which in turn made everything worse. i never could feel like i could control them. so i started getting heavier darts, 21g, then 23g, then 24g. after reading the post here on the forum about scuffing the points i decided to get those 16g out and try them even though i hadn't thrown with them in several months. scuffing them made them stick a lot better but i also found out that i can really throw those babies now! i have done a lot of practicing and Flight School drills and generally improved a lot since i last threw those darts and i found that i have really good control over them. (side note: i threw them probably 10 turns total before and after scuffing so i could see the difference. after that i decided to play some 501 against the computer and my very first throw was a 180, only my 3rd ever since ive started playing). it was amazing how well i could place them.....if i was in a groove. when i wasn't doing well they sort of went all over the place. again, this was after several months of steady improvement.

sorry for this turning into a novel but to sum it all up:

if your throw is half decent and you aren't going from really light to really heavy then the weight isn't really going to matter a whole lot. its kind of like me playing golf. even though i have 14 clubs in the bag there really isn't enough difference in them at my level to carry more than 6. its much more about confidence in your shot. my wife goes through this from time to time. she will do really well with 21g and if she uses anything else and doesn't do well then obviously it was because of that 1g difference! when in reality its just that she has more confidence in those darts because she has done well with them.

heres how i see the weight difference and this is just from my personal experience:

heavier - more error correction. like the golf analogy above these are like the double oversized jumbo drivers. if something is a little off in your throw it will still stay relatively true as long as you get it pointed in the right direction and don't snatch it. since its heavier its a little harder to be consistent with the release especially if you are aiming at different targets around the board. ive found these to be overall more consistent than lighter darts, with all things being equal.

lighter - i can control these much better than heavier darts. these are the clubs that golf pros use. instead of a huge oversized head they use a simple blade. when they miss they usually miss hard, but since they rarely miss its a nice trade off. when i am "feeling it" or in the zone i love throwing these. but when im not doing well i hate these. if i don't concentrate on every single shot i will miss, and when i miss with these i usually miss badly. but i use these a lot for practice because it makes me do everything right or i'll miss, if that makes sense.

overall the best darts you can use are the ones you feel most comfortable with. if you don't have confidence in them then it wont matter one bit how much they weigh. at first i was overwhelmed by the same decisions. what weight? what size stems? what kind of flights? but i came to realize that at my level it really isn't going to matter too much. its safer for me to not think about it and focus on developing my throw than to get caught up in that because i know that right now the reason im missing isn't because im using the wrong dart/stem/flight, its because im just not good at throwing yet.

sorry for the long post but if you made it to the end, thank you very much for reading and i hope some of it helps.

MC

[Hippie]

For me it's whether I can adjust up and down the board reliably.
If they're too heavy I can't reliably adjust and feel my way to the target.

[shaun of the dart]

Thank you all for the advise, im sticking around the 24g but playing with the style of grip.

[BigE]

Simple:

A heavy dart has more inertia, and is less affected by the drag of the flight. It will "carry" to the board with less effort.

A light dart will be more affected by the drag of the flight. It will need more effort to get it to the board.

At least that's my two cents. Hope it is worth that much!

Cheers!

[Banned]

Simple:

A heavy dart has more inertia, and is less affected by the drag of the flight. It will "carry" to the board with less effort.

A light dart will be more affected by the drag of the flight. It will need more effort to get it to the board.

At least that's my two cents. Hope it is worth that much!

Cheers!

It's so much more complicated than that though. Your scenario works great if all things are equal. But people throw at different speeds, use different flights, different stems, grip the dart in different places creating different balance points, different releases, etc...

It's never ending and no 2 people are alike when it comes to darts.

[Dorian]

first off let me say that I have very limited experience with darts and even less with different weights or styles. furthermore, I am not that great of a player. but after buying a few sets of darts with different grips and different weights I can tell you that even at my level I have found that after throwing them for just a few minutes I can throw most darts pretty close to the level that I do with my normal darts. im certainly not perfect with them but I think that's only because I use one set 99% of the time so I am far more used to them.

for me my heavier darts (24g which are my usual darts) will give me a good bit of error correction. as long as I use a smooth throwing motion and get the dart pointed in the right direction from the beginning it will stay true. that being said sometimes with those darts i will tend to miss high or low. my aim will be spot on but the release point is a bit harder to get consistent.

i started off on lighter darts (16g conversions and a set of 18g ones that i picked up on clearance for my wife) and i had trouble with them sticking properly. remember this was when i first started. because they didn't stick hard enough for me my brain kept telling me to throw them harder, which in turn made everything worse. i never could feel like i could control them. so i started getting heavier darts, 21g, then 23g, then 24g. after reading the post here on the forum about scuffing the points i decided to get those 16g out and try them even though i hadn't thrown with them in several months. scuffing them made them stick a lot better but i also found out that i can really throw those babies now! i have done a lot of practicing and Flight School drills and generally improved a lot since i last threw those darts and i found that i have really good control over them. (side note: i threw them probably 10 turns total before and after scuffing so i could see the difference. after that i decided to play some 501 against the computer and my very first throw was a 180, only my 3rd ever since ive started playing). it was amazing how well i could place them.....if i was in a groove. when i wasn't doing well they sort of went all over the place. again, this was after several months of steady improvement.

sorry for this turning into a novel but to sum it all up:

if your throw is half decent and you aren't going from really light to really heavy then the weight isn't really going to matter a whole lot. its kind of like me playing golf. even though i have 14 clubs in the bag there really isn't enough difference in them at my level to carry more than 6. its much more about confidence in your shot. my wife goes through this from time to time. she will do really well with 21g and if she uses anything else and doesn't do well then obviously it was because of that 1g difference! when in reality its just that she has more confidence in those darts because she has done well with them.

heres how i see the weight difference and this is just from my personal experience:

heavier - more error correction. like the golf analogy above these are like the double oversized jumbo drivers. if something is a little off in your throw it will still stay relatively true as long as you get it pointed in the right direction and don't snatch it. since its heavier its a little harder to be consistent with the release especially if you are aiming at different targets around the board. ive found these to be overall more consistent than lighter darts, with all things being equal.

lighter - i can control these much better than heavier darts. these are the clubs that golf pros use. instead of a huge oversized head they use a simple blade. when they miss they usually miss hard, but since they rarely miss its a nice trade off. when i am "feeling it" or in the zone i love throwing these. but when im not doing well i hate these. if i don't concentrate on every single shot i will miss, and when i miss with these i usually miss badly. but i use these a lot for practice because it makes me do everything right or i'll miss, if that makes sense.

overall the best darts you can use are the ones you feel most comfortable with. if you don't have confidence in them then it wont matter one bit how much they weigh. at first i was overwhelmed by the same decisions. what weight? what size stems? what kind of flights? but i came to realize that at my level it really isn't going to matter too much. its safer for me to not think about it and focus on developing my throw than to get caught up in that because i know that right now the reason im missing isn't because im using the wrong dart/stem/flight, its because im just not good at throwing yet.

sorry for the long post but if you made it to the end, thank you very much for reading and i hope some of it helps.

MC

Well done on a 'bones an' all' post which you expressed very nicely. I liked the analogy between dart weights and clubs too. From my experience I would agree with you on many points and especially about throwing quite light darts.
Your action needs to be polished and much more focussed than when using darts that are say 6-7 gms heavier when going from say an 18 to a 25 Gm. The heavier darts are more forgiving and can help correct some of the inconsistencies in ones' throw IMHOGuests cannot see images in the messages. Please register at the forum by clicking here to see images.

In my earlier playing years I would only use 18 Gm darts which I could play to a very high level of accuracy and consistency with and in those days the heavier darts I called "bombers" and I could not handle them at all. N.B These were all made of Brass then.
Nowadays my throwing action is not as consistent and the heavier Dart helps me a great deal and I've adapted to them I'm actually throwing a total of around 27 gms as my stems are solid brass.

I also believe that if I hadn't taken the long break of several years between playing I reckon I'd be still throwing much lighter Darts today.As I said though earlier it's a very good honest post that I enjoyed reading and I'm pleased to give you a +1 rep point.

Cheers Guests cannot see images in the messages. Please register at the forum by clicking here to see images.