Inlayed feather pens

[Steve Trauthwein]

Hello All,

After seeing Les's wonderful pens I broke out my some of my flytying feathers and decided to give this a go. I have one question for those of you that have had any success with this. How do you keep the feathers flat on the tube?

It seems to me that they would almost have to be adhered somehow, but all of my trials have been unacceptable. Maybe much smaller feathers is the answer. If anyone has any tips they would like to share I would greatly appreciate it. I am determined to do this.

Regards, Steve

[Dan Hintz]

I've always seen it done by lashing the tops/bottoms of the feathers with fly fishing line...

[Joe Aliperti]

Shane Whitlock has a really nice photo tutorial on his website here:

http://www.shanewhitlock.com/photo/v/wood/pens/feather_tut/

[Scott Hussey]

Hi Steve

I am right in the middle of this learning curve as well and I just cast my first feathers last night. My results were lass than acceptable but I did learn a few things.

1. I used a spray on glue to secure the feathers and didn't tie them to the tube and they "floated" off the tube when I added the casting material. I guess the casting material dissolves elmers spray on glue - lesson 1

2. I had some prettymmajor bubbling around the feathers . I didn't use a pressure pot and just tried to vibrate the air bubbles out. That didn't work so well- lesson 2.

3. I built a homemade mold for the cast out of sheet metal and used duct tape to secure the pieces together. That seemed to work ok - lesson 3 - at least something worked ok

4. The cast took about 10 hours to fully cure. Lesson 4 - don't skimp on the hardener

I'm still going to turn my blank to see how it turns as I've never turned a cast plastic before and I figure this is my " learner"

I have read that some people use double sided tarp to secure feathers but I'm wondering if that holdup better or not.

I think for my second attempt I'm going to raid my fly fishing vest and tie the feathers on using some Tippett material

I plan to retry my effort in then next week or so and I'll let you know how I do and please share your experiences/ lesons you learnas well.

Thx

Scott