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Well, after posting, discussing, reading, web searches, etc and getting more frustrated, I thought it was time to take matters in to my own hands and start experimenting. What I am trying to achieve is to locate a peacock eye, that when stripped of it's herl, with give one a nice stripped quill with the black line on one side for the segmented look on the body of a fly. Actually, it's not technically a quill but it will be referred to as one by me here.. Stripping of the herl, storage, soaking and chemicals will come later as this is just about locating the right eye feather. These are two peacock quills purchase from a reputable fly tying supplier which is know for their quality. The reason I picked them is because of the back of the quill. From research, one should be able to tell from the color or shade of colors on the back of the eye, which feather will be better to produce the black stripe I am looking for. These, even though quills that were advertised as large and excellent, are pathetic. The good portion for the marking comes from the "bluish" section and about two inches, up or down, on either side from the blue section. First, we need a controlled lab. One that is clean and orderly. This is as good as it gets:) The floor was kept free of any featers or other once living body parts by my assitant, Sissie. . Next I stripped the herl and compared quills from both sides. This is what I ende up with. From the sweet spot on the peackcock eye is a bunch of worse then pathetic quills that had no stripping at all and one could not tie with them even if they wanted to. I knew they ere bad, but they didn't look this bad till I got the herl off. So I dropped back to some moose main, white and black, and got this. Not real happy because the white hair is so much larger then the black that it shows off as prominent. Don't laugh at my wings:). So my conclusion is, the advertised peacock was from a juvinile bird which had not fevloped this characteristic I am looking for. Thus they are not fit for much and will have no stripe. One can't even tie with them except from the herl down on the lower portion of the stem that I could buy as "strung" for a lot cheaper then an "Eye Feather". I have picked out some very large eyes with various shadings and will run the same experiments again this weekend and post more results. I refuse to let a quill intimidate or beat me.