I can have a turkey fan completely finished in 3 days... The actual fan only takes 10 minutes to be completely ready to go..
all i do is cut the fan apart in 3 sections like muddy showed... and set the secondary feathers and the smaller back feathers aside for a few minutes. Then i grab a knife and the fan..wait for it..... and cut each feather off! Then i take the knife and scrape the quills, removing ALL the fat and meat completely... then i dip the quill ends in dawn dish soap and water to remove the oily residues. I make sure i set each feather down in the correct order left to right that i cut it off from... far left feather being the bottom left... far right feather being bottom right.
After each feather is cleaned of all fat and meat... i warm up the hot glue gun. I get a piece of plastic ( milk cartons can work.... but i like plastic storage bins, they're more rigid.) and cut out 2 sections in a fan shape one for the front and one for the back. I lay the fan into position working from left to right, and when i get the fan back to how it was, i lay the plastic piece over the quills and hot glue it down. Then i flip the fan over and do the same to the back, only this time while the hotglue dries, ill add some pressure to the plastic to make the fan curve backwards slightly, like a gobbler does when he struts.
when its all put back together, i take my secondaries and find on the primary feathers where they were when the fan was spread out... you can see this because there will actually be a slight color difference on the feathers. i lay the secondaries on the fan and spread them out until it lines up with the fan. I remember this angle and pin it in that position until it dries. With the back feathers, i just line them up with the secondaries.
After all is dried.... hot glue everythingh together and mount on a plaque!