I have gone thru this before, but just seeing if there are any new ideas to protect and save pin feathers. Alot normally fall out during degreasing and washing. Any new technique on saving these things.
The two drakes I have are beautiful, just not a 100%. They both have a
long line of pins in the wing pocket area and base of tail. Any help would be appreciated.
My experience with pin-feathery bird is that they will always cause you some problems somewhere. Depending on the amount of pinfeathers a specimen has, the quality of the outcome will vary. Sometime your choice of pose can help hide a problem area. For example, a lot of early season birds have pinfeathers throughout the head, neck and body areas while the wings and tail appear to be complete. In cases such as this, a flying pose would make the most sense. Pulling a wing out of the side pocket on a standing bird would serve a similar purpose in hiding a bad side pocket. One could also, as in the case of your wood duck, glue in replacement feathers to form that nice top row on the side pocket. I would do this after the bird is fully posed. The best thing is to avoid poor specimens, if at all possible and if asked to mount a sub-standard specimen, be honest at the beginning with your client so that you protect yourself from unwarranted criticism and displeasure when the mount turn out less than perfect.