What we had to do
We received a call from William Hill who had very little time in which to find a giant dart for a promotional photo shoot. They wanted one so that the World Champion Darts player, Gary Anderson, could have his photo taken holding it to publicize the upcoming 2017 darts championship. The shoot was a week away and was to take place on the River Thames.
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The separate components of the giant dart
The barrel and point of the dart already milled and primed ready to spray paint. We masked the aluminium point so as not to get any paint on it. -
Painted components
The dart painted and ready to be put together -
Fitting the dart together
We used an aluminium rod set in to the barrel so that we could easily fit it to the shaft. -
Finishing touches
We protected the dart shaft with an acrylic clear lacquer. -
William Hill dart
The dart with the flight and William Hill logo vinyl -
Gary Anderson
The World darts Champ Gary Anderson holding the dart during the photo shoot on the River Thames
How did we do it?
We took a dart and looked at its constituent parts. We then drew these parts in AutoCAD and milled the barrel and shaft of the dart in a high density modelling material known as chemi-wood, and we milled aluminium for the point and flight support. We cut the flight from polypropylene plastic and printed the logo on to a gloss laminated self adhesive vinyl which we applied to the plastic flight. Then we painted the shaft with the William Hill logo colour blue, and finished this with a gloss lacquer.
The result
With a short lead time we managed to produce a prop that the client really loved, and World Champ Gary Anderson is reported to have taken the dart home with him after the photo shoot because he too loved it so much.