SpudFiles

i made a dart out of things i found around my house last night and wanted to share it with everyone

heres how i made it:
1.take the metal part and eraser off of a pencil
2.unroll a cotton ball until it will fit into the back part of the metal thing (you could also try using an unused cigarette filter)
3.now you need a point about an inch or so long, for this dart i used the metal rod of a rivit, before i used that i used a straight piece of a paper clip but that bent to easily, you could also use a nail (i didnt because i couldnt find one lol)
4.now just stick the point into your eraser and glue the cotton ball into the back of the metal part of the pencil(any glue will work, i used super on mine)

this dart fits into a .5" barrel and flies really straight and far

Thats pretty awesome . Have any ideas for a 1" barrel?

a roll of coins or just some coins glued together, not sure what kind of coin would work best though, just find the biggest coin that fits in it, may need tape

Quarters fit with only a tiny gap, they work well for pistons in 1."

I use darts like that for a blowgun.

heres some more pics

That is good thinking, i'll have to cook somethig like that up for mine, thanks man. Give me something else to think about.

I also used them in my blow gun from a young age.

You can also make them from a show lace.The plastic end bit that stops them from fraying.Cut them about 2cm down the shoe lace from the plactic bit and stick a sewing pin or small nail they work well.

But at a longer rang they do loose there energy quite quickly due to drag from the flight.

I've got a better dart design for small bores:

1-2" of nail without the head
Sticky tape
2" of garden string

By small bores I mean 4mm. {aka the internal bore of a fibreglass tent pole}

Unravel the string so its loose fibres, bunch one end up tightly and with care and patience tape it flush to the end of the nail.

You now have a 3.(something)mm feathered dart.

I've shoved one through a 1cm plank. (it got stuck halfway but it went though)

wow. i havent posted on this site in forever.

anyway i have a REALLY good dart design that can be adapted to pretty much any size barrel(less than 1.5in).

first of all i designed this for my pneumatic dart gun that uses a .68 barrel. it can send a 4" dart 2.4 inches into a solid oak tree trunk .

the first step is to take a 1gallon water container, the type that is semi opaque plastic, and cut a square out.
then take a candle and heat the center of the plastic untill it is see thru (its actually really cool!) then take it off the heat for about 20 seconds( thats what i found worked best, you can experiment with different times).
once you have done that take the soft plastic and stretch it over a plum bob or other conical object(stretching it slowly worked best for me, again feel free to experiment.)
then once it has cooled take this cone and melt a hole for the metal rod.
cut a metal rod (about 2mm across) to the desired length. then wind some nylon string around this and expoxy it into the cone. leave about 6mm of bare plastic with no epoxy.

i hope that helped, and i might find some time to put up a pic, if you have any questions feel free to email me at gato216@mac.com, but ill probably check back in a few days.

you should try this in your cannon: http://www.geocities.com/blowgunhunter/ that would be sweet but maybe make it shorter than 20 inches

that would probally be really effective ammo and you could hunt with it as well if you were accurate enough (wich im probally not lol)

Why make it shorter than 20"?? I think that would have problems with snapping though.

i just thought that a 20" dart would be a little long for a cannon but i dont know and ya it prolly would have problems with snapping if you shot a tree of something else hard with it, but it seems to work for that guy when shooting animals

Yeah and you know theres only that small difference between animals and trees .