Small project, a little grouse fan.

CAnderson

CAnderson

Well-known member
I have had this grouse fan sitting for the past two years trying to decide what I wanted to do with it. I harvested the grouse in ME with my little white dog Abbygirl (then 2y.o. English Setter). This was her first contact with wild birds. She handled the grouse beautifully. Made for a very memorable first hunt together. I think we put 2 grouse in the bag along with 3 woodcock. Great day for me. It was also the first hunt my son (then 8 y.o.) joined me.

grousefan.jpg


I need to finish securing the pieces together and finish the wood. I plan to use a tung oil based finish called Waterlox. I have used it with very good results on a cherry dining room table and a maple butcher block counter top. Pretty nice stuff.
 
Awesome! I would have never thought about doing a Grouse fan. I saved a wing of my girlfriends first duck and Shane put it in a shadow box for her and it turned out awesome. It's nice to have just a little something to remember the hunt by and a good conversation piece. I love the idea and looks great.
 
Cool display. How do you like the bench cookies? I saw them benind the fan. I have thought about ordering them before but wondered if I would ever really use them.
 
Do to the fan: after cutting the tail from the bird, I cleaned the little bit of remaining flesh from the skin that holds the feathers together. Once the flesh was cleaned, I stuffed it with coarse kosher salt to cure the little big of skin. As mentioned, it has been sitting pinned and salted for two years. I have no idea how long you actually need to let it setup. When I unpinned it today, the fan held its shape perfectly.

Then I took three pieces of cardboard. At least one should be big enough to support the full size of the fan. I then used straight pins from the sewing closet to pin the fan in several places near the vertex of the feathers. I only used multiple pieces of cardboard due to the length of the pins and wanting the pins to hold the fan in its expanded state.

Hope that helps.
 
Luke-

The bench cookies are pretty neat. I have an eight pack. I think Rockler sells an eight pack with a storage rack that can be mounted to the wall.

I typically use them when applying finish and when sanding. They work pretty well. Today, I noticed for the first time that the piece I was working on kept vibrating off the bench cookies while I was sanding. That was completely due to the size and mass of the piece. Larger pieces have never done that for me.

Bottom line. I fined them useful and would buy them again.
 
Do to the fan: after cutting the tail from the bird, I cleaned the little bit of remaining flesh from the skin that holds the feathers together. Once the flesh was cleaned, I stuffed it with coarse kosher salt to cure the little big of skin. As mentioned, it has been sitting pinned and salted for two years. I have no idea how long you actually need to let it setup. When I unpinned it today, the fan held its shape perfectly.

Then I took three pieces of cardboard. At least one should be big enough to support the full size of the fan. I then used straight pins from the sewing closet to pin the fan in several places near the vertex of the feathers. I only used multiple pieces of cardboard due to the length of the pins and wanting the pins to hold the fan in its expanded state.

Hope that helps.

The above is basically the process I have used to dry tails of a number of game birds. I sometimes use some borax with or in place of the salt to act as a better preservative.

I had a nice big grouse tail for a number of years. It would have looked great in a mount like that. A beagle got a hold of it 10 years ago. No more grouse tail. And, Ohio isn't the best place to try and replace it!

Tom
Click to expand...
 
That is a great looking mount. I saved a grey and a brown fan from my first grouse season years ago. I really like the way you mounted that.
 
Thanks for the comments.

I am thinking about having a small brass plaque made up to note the date, rough location and say something like ""Abbygirl's first grouse".

It is hard to tell in the photo (cell phone pic), but the walnut has a lot of figuring in the piece I selected for the front of the fan. I am really hoping that the tung oil brings that out. Hope to do the finish next week.
 
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