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Drying out a turkey fan

You didn't leave the tail bone in it did you? I guess if you get enough scraped off it wouldn't matter but I always remove that pesky tail bone.
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: muddy</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You didn't leave the tail bone in it did you? I guess if you get enough scraped off it wouldn't matter but I always remove that pesky tail bone. </div></div>

I have done both, and now i leave the tail bone in because it holds the fan together better. I just trim it down with side cutters. Then i can get almost all the meat off. I tack it down in a pile of borax and lay a towel over it and lay a weight on top of the feathers to keep them from moving. After 6 weeks what ever meat was left is as hard as a rock. I have done 12 this way and had no problem with bugs. I will have to try it your way and see how i like it.
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Blaster</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: muddy</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You didn't leave the tail bone in it did you? I guess if you get enough scraped off it wouldn't matter but I always remove that pesky tail bone. </div></div>

I have done both, and now i leave the tail bone in because it holds the fan together better. I just trim it down with side cutters. Then i can get almost all the meat off. I tack it down in a pile of borax and lay a towel over it and lay a weight on top of the feathers to keep them from moving. After 6 weeks what ever meat was left is as hard as a rock. I have done 12 this way and had no problem with bugs. I will have to try it your way and see how i like it. </div></div>

Muddy...I remove that last piece of bone...then the quills all lay completely flat.

Blaster - you put a weight on the feathers? Every try just pinning them in place through a couple layers of cardboard?

I pin them in the exact place I want them in all 3 sections, work the borax in, re-do the borax a couple times while removing little pieces of dried meat and that yellow crap each time and then reborax them. It's done in a week to 10 days if you scrape all that crap off each time you re-borax. It's hard as a rock and before I remove the pins I apply a thin later of 5 minute apoxy (I'll already have the 2 smaller sections back together by this point and then I add them to the main tail on top of the apoxy so they all are apoxied together) The apoxy works as a sealer too as well as keeping that tail from moving - ever.
 
I pin the main fan open, and then i arrange the middle feathers how i want them to look. I lay a towel over them and put a 10lb weight to flatten the feathers. When the fans dry it looks just like it did when the turkey was alive and strutting! It takes about 10 min per fan to prep and i don't touch it again until it's dry. Pretty simple.
 
ive only ever done it in one peice and havnt had a problem with it. ive even used salt instead of borax and just left it pinned to card board for a few months. as long as you dont get ramy it will stay together just fine. but i guess if you want it done now rather than later spliting it up seems like the way to go.
 
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!

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