I Found the BEST way to Preserve a TURKEY FAN! DIY Taxidermy 

I cant understand how you let it sit in the freezer for a whole year before doing this but you did a good job. Tip for fixing jacked up feathers, boil water and hold them over the pot. The steam will make the feathers go right back to their origional shape.

The results speak for themselves looks great

two things. on the front side under the first row of the iridescent feathers, there's fat under there. use your knife to ge that fat out. you'll actually be able move the iridescent feathers up and down before you set the fan, but the feathers will stay together. there's also a gland in there you can remove that will help keep the color of the feathers over time. the biggest thing you can do is wash the fan in a cooler with a little dawn dish soap. it will look like a wet mop, but put it out in the sun for 5,6 hours. it'll make it look immaculate when dried and it will actually bind most the broken feathers together

So I found your video a few days before the season opened here in MI and I am so glad I did. I hadn't ever found one that showed a way to get that bone out and man thats SOOOO helpful. I just tagged my largest bird ever this past Thursday afternoon and this will be my 2nd fan mount . Unfortunately my original 2nd mount was destroyed by mice while it was in the curing/drying process and because my house was being rebuilt due to a house fire I wasn't able to check on it in my shed when I need and when I went back it was in pieces. That was back in 2020. My 1st fan survived the fire and was kept at my neighbor's till we moved back in but I'm 100% sure this mount will turn out better because of your video.

Going out for my first turkey hunt next week. I'm excited. Thanks for the info!

I use hot glue instead of bondo. Seems a little easier to me. You definitely need to seal it up though. Good job!!

Your chickens are thinking "what did he do to my cousin tom? And why is his tail in his house"

if you don’t mind me asking, what kind or brand bondo is that?

It's a good video but it's clear you're newer to the process. I actually saw this one a couple days earlier. Seems to be a cleaner setup of effectively the same process. I started drying my first fan out (Jake) with all the meat still attached. I'm actually going to go back and try and do it this way because it flat out seems better IMO. Less chance of things going wrong. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jKJ5usLofb0.htmlsi=oCSxZAmBYCDhkbb7

Quills

This is NOT the best way to preserve a Turkey fan. This is the old way. Looks like you left the tail bone attached and you could have taken way more wax off the ends with a pair of nips and a single sided razor. BONDO method is the best and fastest way.