Do you encounter difficulty when marrying single fibers together? If so, this may be due to the cross sectional shape of each individual fiber (oh, sorry Wayne - each BARB). When held,. the individual barb wants to flip on it's side, thus making it impossible to marry it with others.

One way to alleviate this problem is to marry wider sections of several barbs together, then strip off the excess with a dubbing needle. The excess can then be remarried to the original feather for future use. The first section you use as a base to marry with should be wide enough itself so it doesn't twist on you. If you only want a single strand of this particular feather, build up the section as mentioned above, then remove the excess of that particular strip.

It is also easier to get a nice even edge along the tip of the married section when using this technique, rather than by marrying individual strands together. It is easier to align the "lines" along the "point" of a single strand. I also find it simpler to marry new strands to the bottom, rather than to the top of the wing section as I go along.

If you have trouble counting the amount of fibers needed from each quill (oh, sorry again, Wayne - from each rachis, pronounced RAKE - US), try this: turn the feather over so the concave (reverse) side of the feather is facing you. Run a dubbing needle along the fibers where they connect to the rachis, running it toward the butt of the feather. An audible clicking sound will result as the needle hits each fiber (uh, BARB!). This allows you to evenly match as few as one or as many as 3,217 barbs per left and right sections.