I specialize in waterfowl, so pheasants are not my area. I have mounted a few in the past but they have always had very good tail feathers. One of my customers brought in a bird that has such beautiful plume it was hard to turn down, but the three middle tail feathers are broke off half way down. I have feathers to replace these but im not quite sure how I should do it. I thought that I may be able to cut the originals and splice the new ones in using super glue. What's the best way to do this? I have spliced feathers on ducks and geese amy times but they're not that long. I would have told the guy just to go out and get a better one, but this is one big bird and other then the tail feathers its perfect.
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Surprisingly, the color tones of those feathers match from bird to bird. If you're satisfied with the closeness, pluck the broken feathers out and put a drop of superglue down into the follicle. then seat your replacement feather.
replace those feathers, if your client okays it. remove the tail, clean, and pull out the bad. now put some nice ones in the tail section, pose, and bondo!
It's far easier just to cut off the entire tail and replace it with a good one. Bubba.
If you have the broken feathers fix them.Take a razor blade and shave one end at a severe angle and the other one the opposite way so the two halves will join in an even way. Now take a piece of thin, stiff wire and push it into the part still attached to the body and super glue it in the core of the feather. Now push the other end on the wire till it fits and superglue these two parts together. The wire will give you the support you need to hold them together. Depending on which side is the show side of the feather you could also superglue another piece of wire on the shaft of the feather on the non-show side. Done right, no one will know. Good luck....JL