Processing Turkey feathers.

[Lechwe]

I had saved up a couple years worth of turkey wings. I finally got around to sending them out for someone to process for me. I sent them to Stringstretcher to do for me. I am amazed at how well they turned out. They look like commercial feathers. He ground them and chopped them into 4" shields for me. I'm not sure he even had them a week before they were sent back to me.

Great person to deal with. Anyone looking for someone to do your feathers this is the guy.

Thanks

[stringstretcher]

Thanks Lechwe, I am glad they got to you ok and you like them.  Thanks for the compliments

[$bowhunter$]

lechwe, how many birds di you have and in return how many feathers did ya get back? ive got 1 set of wings in my freezer and will be gettin more from people durring the sping turkey season just wondering how many wing i should collect to get an ample amount of feathers done.

thanks,
steven

[Lechwe]

That's a tough one. I did what you are doing and had friends and family save me all of theirs. The problem was that I did not take care of my feathers as I should have. In my ignorance I sent some pour quality feathers that couldn't be used. I believe I ended up with almost 140 good 4" feathers. Had I taken better care of my feathers right away I probably would have gotten back triple that. It's just a guess but I would say I got 2 chopped feathers from each good whole one I sent.

I would collect every wing you can. I don't think you can ever have too many.

Good luck

[stringstretcher]

$bowhunter$.  On the first three to four feathers that come of the wing, they are the main primaries and for the most part will give you two 4" or one good 5".  What you have to look at is the back end of the last cut of the second 4" is going to be very narrow and not much to glue down.  Not only that, but when you mix and match the cuts of feathers, that is exactly what you get, mix matched fletching.  On secondaries, I only make one chop from them.

What most people like to think is that if the feather they send me is 14" long, they should get two fives and a four inch cut out of it. NOT!!!.  If you look down a primary feather, on the end that goes into the wing, you will see a bulge, bulb, whatever you want to call it about 2 sometimes 3 inches from the end, and the feathers actually start turning into the center of the quill.  You can NOT grind this, it is cut off.  And if you split one, you will see that the back end when ground will go to almost nothing to glue down with.

My best recommendation to you is think 1 really great cut from any feather, and then take what you get as left overs.  There is no way to say how many give you what.  If a quill has a shot hole in it, NO GOOD.  If the feathers are shot off the quill, NO GOOD.  There is no guarantee of what you get back...NONE.

Hope this explains it better.