Turkey feather darts, brass steel tip darts and one dedicated buffer

Some years ago a good friend had given me a set of Widdy No1 turkey feather steel tipped darts. 

and

damn if these wooden darts aren't extremely intuitive to throw: supported by the natural feel of the wood and its long tear dropped axisymmetical shape.

the oldest and the youngest boys have started playing darts with me so i thought it was time to make sure they had their own sets to use. "new" players can be rather hard on darts so i thought it was best to get them their own.  stolling along ebay and found a great deal on two sets of Apex No1 turkey feather darts and as a bonus, with them came two old but seemed to be in very good condition brass sets.

widdy turkey feather dart with the blue stripe,
apex turkey feather dart with the red stripe.

when they arrived the turkey feather darts were ready to go

but 

the brass sets could use with a bit of buffing and waxing.

brass steel tipped darts after polishing and waxing

because i always have a buffer set up for action,

i just went to the tool and gave each dart about 1 minute of attention.

the bottom right of the collage shows one of each of the sets polished and the others are still in need.

the left panel shows the darts ready for waxing.

i used johnson paste wax (my main go to wax) on the buffed metal.

ready for action, i do think i broke the sound barrier when i threw them for the first time.

My one key message with this post is to strongly encourage my boys the importance of having at least one dedicated bench top buffer (or a variable speed bench grinder with a buffing wheel on one side) in the house. 

 having this tool always available will dramatically encourage one to initiate a project. at the very least it will increases the speed of starting and finishing any maintenance jobs.