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Married Wing Help

2K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  flytyer 
#1 ·
Inspired by all the beautiful married wing patterns that folks have been posting I thought I'd give it a try. I'm have a dozy of time trying to keep the fibers married. They keeping coming unzipped or won't marry from the get go. I especially noticed this when trying to marry goose shoulder to turkey on my first attempt at a Highlander. Anyone got some pointers?!? :Eyecrazy:
 
#2 ·
Lefts to lefts and rights and rights to rights. Select feathers that have close to the same size barbs and don't spend a lot of time tying to point the strips together. If they don't stick something is not right. Start with goose to goose before moving on to hard stuff.
 
#4 ·
It sounds like you are getting you left and right goose and turkey mixed up. A left feather fiber will not marry to a right feather fiber. Left feathers are those that have the longest fibers on the left side of the feather when looking at the good (shiny or convex side) of the feather. Right feathers have the longest fibers on the right side of the feather when looking at the good (shiny or convex side) of the feather. Goose shoulder feathers are all like this because of where they are located on the bird.

Turkey tail feathers (whether the long tail feathers or the shorter tail covert feathers) have both a left and right on the same feather. To make sure you have left or right turkey tail fibers (or strip) hold the feather up with the shiny/convex side facing you. The fibers on the left are lefts and on the right are rights.

The easiest way to make sure you have only lefts or only rights together is to use something to keep the cut strips separate. A piece of paper with a verticle line drawn on it, a ruler placed on the tying table, a drinking straw place on the tying table, etc. Then cut all the colors for the left side pile from the left feathers before cutting any of the right side ones. After cutting all the left feathers, cut the right ones. This way you will have only left feather strips on the left side, and only right feather strips on the right side.
It is now a simple matter of marrying all the strips from the left pile, followed by all the strips from the right pile.

This should fix the problem you described of the turkey tail not marrying to the goose shoulder. It really doesn't take much to marry feather strip together. A quick zip (or stroke) up the feather strips to the tip and then down to the bottom of the strip is all it takes. If a feather strip doesn't want to marry to the others, it almost always means that you are trying to marry a wrong side feather strip.

I marry my wings before I start to tie and put them in the small, snack size ZIP-LOCK bags grocery stores sell. I make sure only lefts are in one bag and rights are in a different bag. I will usually marry up the wing sides for 6 or so flies at a time, then place all the rights and all the lefts together in 2 separate zip-locks.
 
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