hackle question

[BassHoney 0]

Does anyone know if I have to keep the hackle feathers on the skin to store them? Is there a way to store loose feathers if the skin is funky or otherwise not available to hold the feathers on?

I raise roosters (and hens and ducks) and I want to be able to use the feathers from some of the different breeds of birds, but I don't always have time for preserving the skin. (If anyone knows of a good resource for instruction on preparing your own hackles, I'm all ears!)

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Beth

[RodL 0]

Beth, you can pull the feathers from the skins and put them in ziploc bags, plastic boxes, etc and anything that is large enough to hold them flat without bending them. If you have the time and energy you can pull the feathers and size them and then put them into whatever you decide to store them in and label that with the hook size that feather will tye. Then if you decide to tye some #10 flies just pull out the bag marked size 10 and you will have the feathers you need to tye that size fly. Just make sure whatever you decide to store the feathers in that you keep it flat so the feathers don't get bent out of shape.

 

Rodney

[skidoosh 0]

Does anyone know if I have to keep the hackle feathers on the skin to store them? Is there a way to store loose feathers if the skin is funky or otherwise not available to hold the feathers on?

I raise roosters (and hens and ducks) and I want to be able to use the feathers from some of the different breeds of birds, but I don't always have time for preserving the skin. (If anyone knows of a good resource for instruction on preparing your own hackles, I'm all ears!)

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Beth

 

Beth you might want to look for a book called from Field to Fly that can give you some good information. With most fowl borax will work fine. For water fowl that have more fat you may need to soak the skin in white gas to strip the fat (be careful and if someone has a safer method please share). I usually wash with dawn to clean the feathers too. If you are short on time just throw it in the freezer, green, until you can preserve the skin.

[arkle 0]

You may be able to find a copy of Hackles by H.F.Elder through s/h book dealers & although it's now probably 30years old a lot of the info in it still holds good today. There's also quite a comprehensive section on Hoffman/Whiting hackles & their development in Paul Schmookler's book in the "Rare & Unusual" series, the 2nd one I think.

[JSzymczyk 0]

I want to be able to use the feathers from some of the different breeds of birds, but I don't always have time for preserving the skin.

 

Beth

 

seems as if it would take a lot longer to pluck, size, organize, and package loose feathers- compared to just skinning out a cape and saddle then prepping the skin and drying it. For chickens, anyhow.

 

Take a look at any taxidermy supply company, there are various chemicals which are pretty cheap and easy to degrease, clean, and protect bird skins. From what I can tell, the hackle we buy from the "big names" are not tanned or preserved. The necks/saddles are just cleaned and dried. Probably washed in a disinfectant and soap solution to retard bacteria growth and remove some oil/dirt.

[Kirk Dietrich 0]

Both JSzymczyk and skidoosh made good points and gave good advice. Another plus to keeping on the skin is that if you tie splayed tailed flies on deer hair bugs, foam or hard bodied bugs, seaducers, etc. you will appreciate being able to select from each side of the patch for a nice splayed tail.

 

I used to be a taxidermist specializing in waterfowl. When a customer brought a duck, if it was fresh, I would skin it out and roll it up in a good bunch of newspaper to insulate it and stick it in the freezer until I was ready to prepare it for "mounting".

As I'm sure you know, the stem of the feather goes in through the skin and across all the tips of the stems inside the bird there is a membrane. In between the membrane and the skin is the fat layer. There are several ways to remove and/or expose the fat for curing; I actually had a big plexiglass box that I had a motor with a wire wheel that I would touch the fat side of the skin to, to remove the fat but that is because of the volume of birds I did it was convenient.

Before that, I used to snip the fat with a scissors by holding the hide with the feather side over the fingers of my left hand to feel and gauge the thickness of the skin. With scissors in my right hand, on the flesh side, just methodically snip/cut the fat from the hide. I actually got pretty fast with this method.

The faster but not as thorough way is to scar the surface of the fat membrane with a razor exposing the soft fleshy fat beneath, which exposes it to the borax for curing.

Whichever method used, prior to the borax, the skin would get a thorough washing in Dawn dishwashing liquid and then a throrough rinsing and squeezing the excess water out. After the rinse and squeeze, I would soak the skins in a bucket of unleaded gasoline for 20 minutes to remove any other fat residues and dirt. Then, I would squeeze the excess gasoline back into the bucket and leave the pelt out to air dry and let the gas evaporate before putting the hide into my clothes dryer with a dry towel. I set it for delicate heat and let it run for 30 minutes, when done, if any of the down was still damp, I'd dry it with a hair dryer. Man, let me tell you, that skin/feathers/fur comes out better looking than when it was alive on the bird/animal.

Then of course, you rub a generous amount of borax into the fat on the skin side of the hide and let cure/dry/dehydrate for several weeks. You should pin it to a piece of cardboard to prevent it from curling.

I've got ducks that I mounted 28 years ago that still look as good as the day I did them and have no stench at all. And, no, there is no gasoline smell either.

 

Kirk

[BassHoney 0]

Thank you all so much for your advice. I do have more than a few necks and saddles in the freezer, and I'm looking forward to preserving them when I get a chance. (My last couple of pelts got some kind of mold that I don't want to revisit again.)

 

Tight lines,

 

Beth

[Termite 0]

Beth,

 

I cure a lot of chicken skins. For fly tying the industry standard is drying the skin feather side up on cardboard. Some producers have more eloborate set up than others but they all use the same basic approch. Skin the cape (or saddle) remove any excess fat and membranes that you can then position the skin on a new peice of cardboard skin side down so it look like you want it to look like when it is dry. Let it sit in a dry place for 3-5 days and pull it off. When you take the skin off, do it slowly! It is easy to rip a hole in your skin, of course the feathers will still be good but it won't look as nice. Then trim the excess skin off around the cape and slide it in a plastic back with a cardboard backer or paper towel if you are just keeping it for yourself.

 

Here is what my capes look like when I'm done curing them in this fashon:

 

 

Good luck!

[fishbayte 0]

Hey Kirk, so when you tumble to dry, it doesn't hurt the feathers???Hackles and saddles survive in marketable condition??? Just wanting to be sure, I have some I will need to do and dont want to waste them!

[Crotalus 0]

Search for some of the articles by Al and Gretchen Beatty and A.K. Best, they all recommend using your spare time while not tying to pluck, separate and size your hackle feathers to save time while tying.

[Al Beatty 0]

Hi Group,

 

As Crotalis indicated, we pluck and size most of the hackle we use. After sizing the feathers we store them in large, multiple-divider plastic boxes, the type that have 4 rows with the slots to form 24 compartments. We don't use the compartment dividers, just the 4 long rows in each box; they are long enough to store the longer saddle feathers. We put each size in it's separate slot using 2 boxes to store the sizes of one color - sizes 6 - 12 in one box and 14 - 20 (or smaller) in the other. A dozen boxes gives us room to store sized hackle for six colors which is about all we keep these days - brown, grizzly, dun, black, ginger (includes barred ginger, light & dark) and white (includes barred white & very light ginger). We often spend the evening watching TV in our easy chairs and sizing hackle. Even if you only size hackle during the commercials you can have a saddle sized by the end of the evening.

 

One last thing: We use strips of non-skid material (like used in RV kitchens cabinets) to keep dishes, etc. from sliding around while traveling down the road. We cut the strips so they are not quite as wide or as long as the slot we are storing the sized feathers in. Those non-skid strips will keep feathers from migrating from one slot to another. Take care & ...

[RoyalWulff 0]

Great advice Al, thanks for that.