When playing darts, it can be both frustrating and daunting task to have a dart break of its tip when it hits the dartboard. It becomes even worse when that dart tip is buried deep inside of an electronic dartboard.
For starters, if there is a small piece of tip you can grip onto, you camn just pluck it out of the dartboard with a little elbow grease. But, Sometimes there won’t be a piece of the tip in which you can easily grab onto to remove.
So, how can you remove it? With the right set of tools, we will show you a few ways to get a broken dart tip out of your electronic dartboard.
Use a Pair of Pliers
The first tool is the most obvious one and you may even already have a pair lying around in your garage. A pair of needlenose pliers should be able to get the job done most of the time.
Needle nose pliers works best if there is a small piece of a dart tip to grip onto and remove. If there is not enough dart tip to work with, then this method may not work at all
Use a Dart Tip Remover Tool
If you can’t get a grip on the dart tip, then you will have to push the dart tip further into the board. For this, you are going to need to get your hands on a dart tip remover tool. There are two different types of dart point removal tools.
We recommend using this dart point removal tool as it is specifically designed for tips that break off inside an electronic dartboard.
A dart tip remover tool is a pointed tool. If you are into your DIY, then it looks pretty similar to a bradawl.
At the end of the tool, there will be a small hole. This hole is enough to grip onto the dart tip. Once you have lined everything up, you can push the dart tip further into the board. It should go completely through the board. This means it isn’t going to hamper your play for the rest of the game.
Some people will give the dartboard a very light tap with the palm of their hand once they have pushed the broken dart tip through as much as they possibly can. This will help to knock the dart into a position that is ‘out of the way’.
You don’t have to do this, but it only takes a fraction of a second of effort, so you may as well, right?
However, you will have to do one last job once you have pushed the dart tip through, which leads us neatly onto the next method.
Open up the Electronic Dartboard
This last method is the least favorite and also takes the most time to perform. It’s completely opening up your electronic dartboard to manually remove the dart tip from the inside.
Switch off the electronic dartboard, remove it from the wall, and open it up.
Assuming that you have an electronic dartboard that is of a decent quality, then it will come with instructions on opening it up. After all, the manufacturers will expect you to have a couple of broken tips here and there.
Once the board is opened up, you will be able to remove any of those dart tips that you had pushed through previously. If there are a few that you weren’t able to push through for whatever reason, you should now have easier access to them. This means that you can pull them out with a pair of pliers.
Honestly, if all else fails, all you need to do is open up the electronic dartboard and you can pretty much deal with the problem in mere seconds.
Once the tip has been removed, just screw everything back together and your dartboard is ready to be used again!
Can You Leave a Broken Dart Tip in a Dartboard?
It is not a good idea to leave broken dart tips in your dartboard. It is important that you always remove them soon as possible. You have to remember that if the dart tip is stuck in that board, you won’t be able to throw a dart at that spot of the dartboard
If you do, any dart that gets close to where that dart tip is will just bounce out. Although the dart entry holes are small, leaving multiple broken tips in your dartboard will soon add up and really effect the quality of the game.
There is also a strong chance that leaving a dart tip stuck in the board will alter or affect the scoring system. This is because the electronic dartboard is always going to be getting a ‘reading’ from wherever that dart tip landed.
What Can You Do if the Dart Tips Are Always Breaking?
If your dart tips are always breaking off, then we recommend that you use better quality dart tips.
Now, all qualities of darts will have their tips break off. If you watch a professional game of darts where they use the ‘best of the best’ on the dart front, there will be a few breakages every now and then. However, if you seem to be experiencing it multiple times per game, then your dart tips are probably the issue.
We recommend going with a high quality brand like Viper. These high quality soft tip dart points by Viper come in large quantities and are in the most common thread size, 2BA.
You will also need to remember to replace the dart tips frequently. They are only designed to be thrown a certain number of times. Each time that dart hits the board and is pulled out, it is going to start to break down.
If that dart tip has hit the board a couple of hundred times, then it is bound to break off. At the end of every game, we suggest you look at the tip to see whether there is any wear and tear to it.
Some people also find that their dart tips break a lot easier if the dartboard is of a lower quality. For example, it may grip the dart tip a little bit too much, which can cause the dart tip to break as you try to remove the rest of the dart.
So, if you have decent quality darts but didn’t spend all that much cash on the dartboard, then this is probably going to be the reason why.
Remember, you should only ever be using soft tip darts on your electronic dartboard. If you don’t, then you run the risk of damaging that dartboard. The broken tips will probably be the least of your worries then!
Final Thoughts
Broken dart tips on a dartboard are a common occurrence. It shouldn’t really be happening every single game that you play, but it will happen often enough that you will need to know how to deal with it.
Thankfully, having a pair of pliers and a dart tip removal tool should be more than enough for most instances.
If you find that your dart tips seem to be breaking more often than not, then it would be a good idea to invest in a new set of high quality dart tips as these seem to offer the best performance and reliability.