Short Thin Barrels

I posted these picks for the benefit of Jeff Pickup when trying to convey to him which way my dart tendencies have been leaning lately and that is towards the short thin barrel on a medium stem. It is funny how your preferences can do a full reversal over the course of several years but occur in such small increments that you never notice until you look at old blog posts. Several years ago when I started this blog (which was at least a couple years after I started playing darts) I had strongly held convictions toward a 24 gram barrel with short stems and standard dimplex flights.

This was back in the days when google groups was a worthwhile discussion medium and when dartbase was a scrolling forum. His forum is a phpBB borad now and still completely awesome.

I have not thrown a 24 gram dart in competition for what seems like ages. My best performance lately has been with my 18 gram Mavs.

The above barrel is very thin. 15 gram Featherlight. The Featherlights above did me right for a long time and they were always more than just a training dart for me. I used to keep them in my dart case when I went to league or shoots and I'd fall back on them when my regulars get squirrelly. I still throw them from time to time. Using them is what turned me onto medium stems since these are my shortest (well one of my shortest) barrels and it is hard to dress them in short stems which was always my usual fare.


The above is a 17 gram Featherlight which is 3 millimeters longer and just slightly thicker than the 15 grammer. I like it quite a bit.


The above is an 18 gram Maverick by Freeflight. 44 millimeters long and thicker though not by much than the standard nylon stem.