Quality Peacock Quills

[dontheo 0]

I have been on a quill body tear lately and am in need of some more peacock eye for stipping. I am trying to find a large eye with good black striping on the quill but the stuff I have been ordering is garbage.

 

I looked at "Polish Quills" but I did not see the black edging I am looking for on the quill when it is stripped. All the quills I have received have small eyes and the quills in the blue section, where the stripe comes from, are like cat fur.

 

Does anyone have a good sourc for some decent peacock that they could share.

 

Thanks

[planettrout 0]

Spirit River used to offer them...don't anymore.

 

Try these:

 

http://greatfeathers.com/veniard-stripped-peacock-quills.aspx

 

 

PT/TB

[DrVette 0]

I don't know if the prices are still about the same or even if they still offer this but, on eBay (under wedding planning believe it or not) i found places selling bundles of 1000 long quills with eyes for about $20 to $30. I picked out about 100 of the best ones and gave away the rest to others who are not as picky-oon as i. I striped alot of the herl as well for reular herl ties. I guess my ex had an occational good use...like a broken clock.

[Piker20 0]

I received some good herl through the wedding route. But I think the consistant stripe is the golden egg so you need to wade through plenty of quills. Have you tried holding a quill in your vice, vertically down and running a fine tipped perminant marker down in a steady non stop run? Might leave the colour you want down just that edge??

[sandflyx 0]

I make my own

[dontheo 0]

You know guys, I have been giving a lot of thought to the black sharpie down the side of the quill. That makes a lot of sense. Too bad I got pissed off last night and trashed a bunch of them. I found a site, the feather emporium. It's fun just to look at it.

 

Thanks

[dontheo 0]

And all this time I have been buying peacock from tying stores. Ebay has incredible selection and amounts.

[MikelC 0]

Some of the best peacock feathers I have found come from Joanne Fabrics and Michael's crafts. Cheap too!!

[dontheo 0]

All I needed was an excuse to go to one of those places. I bette go to hobby lobby while I am ast it:).

[Phish 0]

I dont do Fleabay but Feather-crafts has always been my source for herls.

[keep_lookingup 0]

If you know anybody that has peacocks they will give you a lifetime supply. My inlaws had a couple of peacocks years ago in Boulder and I am still tying with the peacock they gave me. They had 5 gallon buckets full of shed quills.

[mvendon 0]

Hi dontheo,

 

The best eyes for this are the ones that are 40" and over in stem length. The eye part should be 1 3/4 to 2" plus wide. This is only the eye section, and not the extending part of eye herl that's too thin to use. If the eye's are any smaller, you're going to be limited to 14's and down. Smaller eye's are useless for stripped quills. You want the ones from the very few back rows on a peacock. It doesn't matter where they come from country wise. Many have tan/beige with a dark edge. Many don't even have that. Wrap the quill over a white base to bring out the lighter section more. Leave a little gap between each wrap, and then wrap a black or dark brown thread in this gap for super contrast. It's a real crapshoot to find the best light dark contrast eye feathers. If it wasn't, they would be easily available, even at good prices.

 

Regards,

Mark

[dontheo 0]

Mark:

 

You are right. The real old timers also wrapped wire, very thin, on the quill. I was reading last night that AK Best could tell if the stripe was present by looking at the back side and the tone of the beige color from the back. Once I get this figured out I will post some pics to help with selection.

 

Buying off the web is not the way to go.

 

Thanks to all.

[lykos33 0]

You'll laugh and call me crazy....again....but my best peacock, whether it be for the quill body or a herl body, came from peacock feathers I purchased at a dollar store in the hobby section. You get 3-4 feathers with nice eyes and lots of straight herl for stripping and kinky herl for wrapping....$2 for 4 feathers is not bad considering how many flies I get out of it...

Murray

[DrVette 0]

Buying off the web is not the way to go.

 

This might be one of those exceptions to the rule. The reasons are evident if you look at where all those large batches of peacock feathers are coming from...Mostly from China (Almost all the others are asian as well). Why is that? Simple, Asians love to eat peacock and pheasant as well as their eggs. There might just be as many peacocks around there as there are cows around the United States. They have MASIVE growing centers processing both live and butchered birds. The live ones they clip the tail feathers off of when they start getting to display size to prevent fighting, un-wanted mating, pests (bugs), disease (from dragging through poo) and i can't remember what all else. They help increase profit margins by bundeling them up and selling to US markets (other places also i would guess).

 

Now the centers selling you the higher priced ones buy those exact same bundles and sort them out by size and quality...do you really think they are looking close at the quality? I doubt they care beyond obvious problems. They send those to a packing center, lable them and then warehouse untill they fill orders.

 

Getting them straight from the source also means you get fresher than the ones in the warehouse. This i have found to be important for wraping quality since after a year or so they start splitting along the racus. I am discovering that all my feathers are suffering from that after letting everything sit for the last 2 years.

 

All of this means you might want to rethink that moto for this case...just think how many tiers you will bring a smile to by giving them your excess. And there isn't a large enough market share for peacock to be much of an impact on any US jobs. Just my thoughts on it. I think the increase in cost and only having bundles of 100 are due to shipping costs being included in the prices...i looked and think that i did that order about 5 years ago...how much has fuel rizen since then?