I recently bought some Phase 6 darts which I absolutely love, the only thing that I was unhappy with was the 'lip' where the point meets the barrel. I seemed to be getting a lot of deflections and felt that it was causing damage to my flights. I decided that I wanted them re-pointed with Target Storm points, but my dilemma was that I don't have a re-pointing machine, and I am too impatient to send my darts off and wait for them to be returned. I do however own a rivet gun and had read on here that it was possible, so I thought, why not.....
I ordered some storm points yesterday, they cam this morning and I set about it.
I practiced removing the points from an older cheaper dart first to make sure that it workedThis is the dart that I wanted to re-point:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Here is the tools that I used, the back of my old dartboard was my work surface (ignore the junior hacksaw):
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]The first thing I did was select the correct collet size for my rivet gun, opened the handles and then inserted the dart, point first - as far as it would go:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]The I held the barrel of the dart in one hand, and squeezed the handles of the rivet gun together, and this pulled the point from the dart as easy as can be:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]When I read about this method previously, somebody said that it damages the points of the darts. I found with my rivet gun (Stanley) that is leaves a series of grooves towards the end of the point that almost resemble board grippers and I think they would work quite nicely:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Then I had to get the new points in the barrels. this was the tricky part. I said ignore the junior hacksaw, but what I had used that for was to cut down an old plastic stem, which I inserted into the barrel, so that I could hit it with my hammer to drive the point into the barrel, using the reverse side of my old dartbaord as my surface. However, although this worked when practicing putting original points back into older darts, the storm points are too tight of a fit in my unicorn darts and caused the stem to shear, leaving the thread in the barrel. Not difficult to remove, but I would not advise this method. Obviously the plastic is weaker than tungsten and this was always going to happen, but it was early in the morning, so you have to give me that one:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]As I said, the fit of the storm point with this barrel is very very tight, so I ended up using some silicone lubricant and a smaller collet than that which I used to remove to points, put the point through the back of it and then used the flat face on the other side to hit with my hammer whilst resting the rear of the barrel on my work surface:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]After a few firm blows, the point was 'driven home', and the beauty of the storm points is that the 'collar' allows you to guide the point in true. Here is the finished article:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]I'm very happy with the result and I haven't noticed any real different in the balance of the dart, and from a small practice session they do seem to be an improvement.
