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If you’ve ever been shopping for online bristle dart boards you probably found more choices than Lady Gaga has costumes! What makes one bristle dart board better than another? Well, for starters don’t buy a dart board actually made of bristle, or hogs hair. That practice was given up long ago in favor of a new material, sisal fiber, and a plant that is grown in warm climates. The advantage to using sisal fiber is that it has self healing properties that close the hole up after the dart is pulled out. This greatly extends the life of the board. Most traditional dart boards made today are made of sisal fiber. You might find some cheap boards made of wound paper but since sisal has become so popular and affordable there is no reason to go with inferior materials like wound paper just to save a few bucks. So make sure it is made of sisal fiber.
The next biggest difference is the spider, which are the strips dividing each section. Again you will find some cheap boards with a plastic spider. Stay away from those. Most traditional boards today have a metal spider and the little bit more money it costs is well worth it. Now, regarding the spider, the thinner the dividers and the fewer staples holding them in, the better. This way your dart is less likely to hit the divider or a staple and bounce out. At the bottom of the line we have spiders made of rounded wire and a lot of staples holding it to the board. An improvement to this is the use of triangular or diamond shaped wire which helps deflect the dart off of it and into the dart board, thus reducing the number of bounce-outs. The best examples like the Viper Razorback utilize knife-blade thin wire embedded directly into the surface which totally eliminates the use of staples that sometimes get in the way. Also look for a staple-free bull’s eye, a feature not limited to top of the line models anymore but found in intermediate level models as well. Nod or was the first company to offer a staple-free bulls eye, which Nod or calls the Sup bull, and the Nod or Sup match Bristle Dart Board comes with the latest version of this innovation, Sup bull II, which features slanted edges to guide the dart into the target for increased scores.
