Dart Board Maintenance: Tips to Maintaining Your Board

If you've purchased a high-quality dartboard, you'll want it to endure as long as possible. Premium natural fibers, such as Kenyon sisal, are used to create high-quality dart boards that can undergo numerous dart games and last a long time. However, these dart boards, also known as bristle dart boards, require simple care and maintenance to avoid premature deterioration.

Here are a few tips to assist in cleaning your barbed dartboard and keep it in excellent shape for as long as possible.

Regularly rotate your board.
Certain sections of your dart board are more susceptible to damage than others. Segments like the 20 and 19 will wear down faster than other board areas since they get targeted more frequently. Make sure you rotate your dartboard regularly to avoid an uneven look and damage. If you play, turn the board at least once a week.

What Is the Best Way to Rotate Your Dartboard?

A detachable metal scoring ring gets included with bristle boards. Remove this ring and spin the board clockwise to rotate your dartboard. Rotate it till the next black part of the board is at the top. It would entail switching from the 12 to the 20 section. Replace the ring now. Continue flipping the board in this fashion until the 12 replaces the 20 on each rotation.

Rotate the board is done to help maintain the board's style, but also helps keep the bristles in excellent form, resulting in fewer bounce-outs in the popular Cricket and 01 numbered games. The location of the bull's eye does not change when the board gets rotated.

Never clean the board with water or other substances.
You might hear that cleaning a dart board with water or other mild solutions is a good idea, but in actual fact, the natural bristle strands of a quality dart board are not intended to get wet. The board should be kept as dry as possible, and it also helps to avoid any potential humid areas while hanging the board.

If possible, keep your board cold and dry. If you play darts outside, ensure the board isn't left out in bad weather, or ideally, store it in a dry, sheltered place.

Make use of smooth, sharp darts.
Many new steel tip darts have been designed to improve grip, accuracy, and reduce bounce-outs, and as a result, contribute to keeping your board in top-notch shape.

Steel tips with hooked ends may hold their place in the board better, but these hooked darts will shred the bristle strands when removed from the board. As a result, it would appear as if strings have separated from the board over time.

You could have a great set of steel tip darts with dull tips that haven't sharpened in a while, and as a result, the fibers on the board will be packed down over time.

Keep an eye out for burrs.
Finally, if not maintained, dart tips might acquire burrs or other irregularities. It occurs more frequently with lower-quality darts.

Before playing, ensure there are no burrs on the darts and sharpen them regularly. Also, change your dart tips regularly.

However, assure that you are not oversharpening your darts, as, on impact, extremely sharp tip points might enhance bounce-outs or separate segment wires.

Twist, don't pull!
The damage to the densely packed bristle can be increased by yanking the dart off the board, and this is something you want to avoid for key dart board maintenance.

A mechanical steel tip dart should never get forced off the board. These darts feature moveable or retractable tips that securely embed themselves in this board to help decrease bounce-outs and minimize deflections, so make sure you twist your dart while removing it, instead of simply yanking it out of the board.

Don't go overboard with your setup.
Having a good cabinet and dartboard set up to display your board and keep things neat is fine. However, don't go overboard by using a hefty cabinet or fittings that add too much weight without being mounted.

There have been numerous reports of magnificent dart boards collapsing due to heavy cabinets that are not securely fastened to the wall. Keep things simple and ensure that the board gets installed firmly.

Maintaining your darts

Maintaining your darts is actually a key factor in dart board maintenance. As mentioned above, a blunt or oversharpened dart can contribute to harming your board, so it's important to take the necessary precautions to also maintaining your darts.

Sharpening the tips of the darts
Dart tips can become dull or lose their sharpness, which can greatly increase bounce-outs as a result.

Sharpening your darts can alleviate such problems; you can use grinding paper or a dart sharpener to do so. When you sharpen the dart, observe the tip from various angles to ensure that it does not become excessively sharp.

We have further explored this subject in an article here, and we'd recommend reading this in-depth and taking the necessary steps to correctly sharpen your darts.

Give the soiled dart a good cleaning
Darts collect dirt and dust, and the barrel is particularly vulnerable to this.

In this scenario, use detergent water and soak the barrel for at least six hours before cleaning it with a paintbrush or toothbrush. The dart must then get rinsed with clean water.

Conclusion
Darts and dart boards are your teammates who assist you throughout a game, and they require your efforts to keep them in their best shape.

It's easy to simply ignore the signs and not properly care for your equipment, but by doing so, they will eventually get inevitably destroyed much quicker than if they were properly maintained.

A little time and effort will go a long way toward ensuring that your darts and dart boards longevity is maximized, so spare an hour or two out of your hectic weekend schedule to make essential repairs.