darts and shafts

[devils son in law]

Sorry for my questions as I'm getting back into darts after a very long time.....

I went to the local big box store to look thru the poor selection of darts and bought a set of $20 Halex darts, 80% at 20g.  Just to try something other than my 25 yr old 25g Data darts.

  The first thing I noticed was the aggressive grip, which I didn't care for that much, there was also a groove further back on the dart making me want to go back much farther on my hold than I'm used to.  Though I have to admit, I was rather consistent.

Are aggressive grips popular with veteran throwers?  By looking at others set-ups, it doesn't seem so.

Shafts.... does the shaft material make much of a difference? Also, the Halex darts came with a rotating shaft which I swapped out and hope to try soon. I assume less flight damage with tight groupings.

 Maybe I'm better off trying the $20 specials till I find a weight and grip that's for me, huh?  Thanks for your patience, gents!!

[Getagrip]

Its really all personal preference as regard to grip.

Stems I would say the most popular are nylon ones but again people like others for various reasons, its what is part of the fun in darts trying different stems and flights or darts until you find something you like.

[Great White North]

Totally agree with everything Darren said above.  

Also, if you're wanting to try inexpensive yet good quality barrels some of the on-line shops from the UK have great selections.  Madhouse, Darts Corner, etc have Nodor/Designa ranges respectively that deserve a good look.  Some will be less than your box store offerings and a bigger selection for sure.

For myself most of the fun with the grand game is the search and testing of new barrels, flight/stem combo's.  Enjoy your quest. Guests cannot see images in the messages. Please register at the forum by clicking here to see images.

[Berlin180]

 Maybe I'm better off trying the $20 specials till I find a weight and grip that's for me, huh?  Thanks for your patience, gents!!

That's what I'd recommend. Go to Red Dragon and buy a bunch of different Flightmasters. RD's postage costs are higher than those of some other vendors, but if you spend 75 pounds you get an extra set of Flightmasters for free. So basically you can get eight radically different sets of pretty good darts for about a hundred bucks at today's favorable-to-us-Americans exchange rate, pick out the barrel length / width / shape that works best for you (for me, it's 45-48mm long although I can go to 51, 6.6-7.2mm wide, straight barrel), and then once you have that down, find darts of those specs and experiment with grip.

[devils son in law]

Thank you for the feedback, gentleman!! Guests cannot see images in the messages. Please register at the forum by clicking here to see images.

[Little al]

Have a look on The Darts Clearance site if you can not see any thing to suit an E mail to them describing what you are looking for will probbly result in a set/s to suit