Thread: Prepping and cleaning feathers today

What kind of feathers you doing?

Duck flank feathers for doing jigs and flies

Enough to a bunch of jigs. In my opinion the best material for crappie and bluegill.

That’s a lot of future jigs


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

Originally Posted by Fatman

Getting a lot of nice feathers washed, dried and bagged up today

3 more batch's washed and soaking

First two batch's Gallon zip bags all washed/dried and ready to go

Another batch to go in dryer

And a whole lot more to go!!!

Those will keep you in business for awhile

Do you have a certain cleaning and drying procedure for raw feathers ?

billygee

For the duck flank feathers I use plastic coffee cans and I sort the feathers by type and then put the feathers in with Dawn foaming dish soap (squirt and a 1/2 a couple of tablespoons of
20 mule team borax – it acts like a natural bug deterent, then luck warm water NEVER fill the can full of water just, about ½ way will do it you have to have expansion space for the soap bubbles!! LOL. Put the lid on and pressing down firmly on the lid shake the heck out of them, let them sit for and hour or two then shake them again and let sit again. Put a layer of paper towel on your counter and then Pour the feathers into a strainer and rinse completely.

Grab a handful and squeeze the water out and put on the paper towel – when done cover them with more paper towel and press down. Put the feathers in a pillow case and put a static sheet in with them and tie a know in the pillowcase and put them in on high heat for 5-6 mins then just fluff them on no heat until dry. Then pull them out and into zip lock bags, even then they don’t go in my bins until they do a quarantine period of 90 days. Not a problem I have many already done and even more that I’ve dyed different colors.

Make friends with duck hunters!!! Haven’t been able to hunt with my back and these guys get me the really nice big flank feathers when they pull them!! Let them know what you want and make them some jigs or give them painted jig heads or send them some beer money!! A little work and you’ve got a continuing supply of good materials. I was always taught to use the whole animal if you hunt them and this makes sure of it!!

Great info Thanks for sharing
Saved it for future reference

billygee

got a picture of a jig or 2 you made with them?