Tips for curing fans and beards????

[ol_grayfeather]

My son shot his first turkey today and I want to do a plaque with the fan, the beard, and the shotgun hull.   Anyone have any tips for doing it right and so that it lasts a long time?

Its his first, you'll always remember your first.

[Machias]

A really awesome looking thing is the to skin the whole cape out.  Look at the turkeys neck and you'll see two line running down the sides of his neck, skin the entire back along these lines all the way down to the tail, then use thumb tacks to stretch the whole thing out.  Thumb tack the tail out and clean as much meat off the tail as you can.  Cover the whole thing with Borax.  Makes one of the pretties trophies you can have.

Congrats to you and your son!!!

[Machias]

This explains it better than I did.

http://www.wildturkeyzone.com/articles/cape.htm

[BLKBEARKLR]

Yep borax is the way to go. Get it all pinned down and really make sure you have cleaned it good. make sure you remove all the fat also. And then just 20mule team borax from walmart and put it right to it and you will be fine.

If you are having some problems with the feathers, you can wash the entire thing in some dawn soap, it will look like crap when it comes out but just take a hair blower and keep MOVING it around and the feathers will dry out and you can get them looking really nice.


Joe

[tlbradford]

Don't worry about taking too much fat or meat either.  You can always glue the feather in place when you mount it to the plaque.

[tlbradford]

And make him a wingbone caller for fun.  I think it is Tom Tamer who has some realy fancy ones???  You can find a ton of info from a google search on making these. 

[PA BEN]

Read my last post on this thread.
http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,16919.15.html