How to Make a Homemade Dart

Some darts are more dangerous than others and care must be taken when using these grownup toys. Darts were originally used as primitive weapons used for both hunting and protection in ancient times. Today darts are used mostly for games and competitions, but are occasionally used by emergency personnel for administering animal tranquillizers, for example. Learn how to design and make some homemade darts of your own.

The first kind of homemade dart is the small blowgun dart. It is very easy and simple to make and you can make a whole bunch of them in a short amount of time. Start out with a simple sewing needle, choose some thread and thread the needle, leaving about one inch of thread coming out of the needle's eye on each side. Then tie a knot in the thread so it is secure to the needle. Repeat this process up to 15 times or as many as you can get through the needle eye. You will now have 30 one-inch threads tied to the needle. Now take the eraser off of the end of a pencil so that you have a perfect small cylinder to use as the base of the dart. Push the needle through the center of the top of the eraser so that the point comes out of the bottom. Stop pushing once the end with the thread attached to the needle is just underneath the surface of the top of the eraser. You now have a homemade dart used for a blowgun, which can be made by rolling up a piece of heavy paper into a tube. You can also throw the darts but they will not go too far without a blowgun to shoot through.

Make a normal sized dart that you can use on a dartboard. Take a new pencil and cut off the end of it right at the base of the eraser. All you are left with is a straight pencil with no metal or eraser attached to it. Now take a knife or saw and put four notches about 1/4 inch deep into the end of the pencil in the shape of a cross. The end of the pencil should kind of look like a Phillips head screwdriver could fit into it. Be extremely careful and take your time because it is very easy to split the pencil in half, and if you do that you will have to start over. Now take a piece of cardboard and cut out four small diamond-shaped pieces about 1 inch each in diameter. Use the glue and apply plenty of it inside the four notches on the end of the pencil. Place one cardboard diamond inside each heavily glued notch so that you have four guiding fins on the end of the pencil. After the glue dries, simply sharpen the other end of the pencil. You will be amazed at how well this type of dart works.

The last kind of homemade dart, and the most dangerous, is the lawn dart. There are many different ways to make a lawn dart but this lawn dart is made with a potato. Take a penny-sized nail and tie five or more pieces of twine about six or seven inches in length around the base of the nail so that you have at least 10 pieces of twine hanging off the back of the nail. Next simply drive the penny nail through a potato long ways until about two inches of the nail is sticking out of the other end of the potato. The twine pieces should be sticking out of one end of the potato and the nail point should be sticking out the other end. The potato lawn dart is a funny looking, but it works.