Eagle Feathers

Alam ed Din, Adnan · Post by **Alam ed Din, Adnan** » Fri Dec 25, 2009 10:59 am

Hi, Happy New Year to all Atarn Members!

I would like to share a web find with you in case anyone wants to replicate these magnificent Tibetan style arrows from the Atarn home page, or if you want to make kyudo style Japanese arrows. Eagle feather imitations made with love and great detail: http://www.reallegalfeathers.com/index.html
I have been looking for good quality eagle feather imitations since long. The problem was the following: while a lot of the faux eagle feathers look great, they are mostly hand painted or airbrushed using a colour that hardened the feather webbings. So if they got roughened up, it was not possible to re-arrange the feathers webbing. The guys at reallegalfeathers have found a way to do the dyeing with a new technique that keeps the feathers soft, so they can be re-arranged with steam if roughened up.Their dye is also water proof (!). They are a Lakota people, they pay a lot of attention to the most minute detail and even dots on those feathers and if one works these into a fletching, its near impossible to tell these apart from real eagle feathers except that turkey feathers maybe roughen up a bit faster then real raptor feathers because the webbing is is not as tightly woven as in real raptor feathers.

Jos?Dom · Post by **Jos?Dom** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 3:50 am

I have seen this website before but I didn't order any feather. Did you try these feathers yourself? They look good.

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:53 pm

Hair dye is a good feather dye because it does not harden or stick the barbs of the feathers together.

yokhua · Post by **yokhua** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 8:03 am

I have bunch of real stuff, given by native Taiwanese people (Taloko tribe).

They used to kill and eat the eagle....and burn out all the feathers.... What a waist...

Pity, for there is no way I can send these to anyone....

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:05 pm

Yokhua; What is the name of that eagle in English? Haven't heard from you in some time. Be well. -j-

Jos?Dom · Post by **Jos?Dom** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:27 pm

Yokhua, very nice feathers. You?re very lucky. I?m 99% sure those aren?t eagle feathers, they are hawk feathers though I?m not sure yet what specie of hawk.

Alan Flashing · Post by **Alan Flashing** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 6:30 pm

Hawk or eagle they are pretty cool looking.
Alan

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:43 am

Maybe Crested Serpent Eagle. Similar look to Harpy Eagle of South America.

Immature birds always have more dramatic patterning.

I would be interested to hear about Realegal feathers. I know the owner and he has had some problems finding materials. His product is the best non natural, convincing.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Sun Jan 24, 2010 2:40 pm

I saw the owner of Real Legal Feathers las weekend and he told me he has plenty of supplies for orders. They are truly the best imitation of Eagle.

Peter Dekker · Post by **Peter Dekker** » Mon Jan 25, 2010 12:14 pm

I contacted the seller and he told me they were based on Turkey feathers. Now turkey works great in my experience on most arrows but for the long fletchings I want to make on my manchu arrows I prefer a thinner and softer feather.

Does anyone know of a source of feathers with a usable part of at least 25 cm, preferrably even 30-35 cm, that is soft? Of all birds, I think vulture or large stork would be the best non-endangered bird feather I can get but so far I've only been able to get them in small numbers, not nearly enough for a set of arrows.

-Peter

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Mon Jan 25, 2010 1:21 pm

Peter; Secondaries are softer than primaries. Have you tried assembling two fletches into one?

Some feathers may not travel well between borders.

Zoran Pavlovic · Post by **Zoran Pavlovic** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:17 pm

I get a bunch of falcon's feathers from some friend from Croatia. He is falconer and his falcons throw the feathers off every year, so he collected it for me.I tried several fletchings and it is good from my opinion though i will use it for my best shafts. There's a lot of ''left'' and ''right'' ones.Someone said:''Man, you could get jail because of it'', but i do not know any law that could forbid me to get feathers that falcons change every year.*In my language we use word sokol(in croatian too) for both, falcon or hawk. Am waiting for opinion of other friends from atarn.

Zoran Pavlovic · Post by **Zoran Pavlovic** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:21 pm

...an arrow with these feathers....

Zoran Pavlovic · Post by **Zoran Pavlovic** » Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:23 pm

...another one

KenH · Post by **KenH** » Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:43 pm

Beautiful work Zoran!

I would think that obtaining feathers from a falconer would be alright. But them I don't work for your government's Department of Natural Resources. All you can do is ask...