Stripping peacock quills using bleach

Peacock quill is universally popular. It creates a great segmented effect, useful for all types of flies, but it especially lends itself to use on imitative patterns.

As always, with something that is great to use, it has a downside. Preparation. There is a way to over come this; pay a company £3-4 for twenty five pre-stripped quills. I don't know about you, but as good as they are, I loath to pay that much for them.

So what do you do if you too don't want to pay for pre-stripped quills.

Watch this video.


Here's some that I've done this afternoon.

Natural peacock eye

Nature's Spirit peacock eye dyed sunburst

As you can see it gives pretty good results. There are a few fibers left; I'm not so bothered by these, they easily come off by pulling the quill through your fingers. And you know you haven't got too far with the bleaching and potentially ruined the feather.