OK, here is a Taxidermy lesson that will give you instant results and you can hang in less than an hour from start to finish.
Use a scalpel or Havalon or caping knife and skin back the hide exposing both layers of the feather quills. Don't be to shy, dig in there and cut dut back far, without much worry.
Cut between the layers of quills and then in between each quill to separate the quills. Don't worry again, things will get real loose and seem like you ruined it but stay with me here. Now get a fine wire wheel from the tool or hardware store, the kind you would put in a bench grinder with the finest wires they have. put a bolt through the wheel and nut it so you can now chuck it up in a drill. Take that baby to those quills and it will eat all that fatty meat from between those quills like Miller on a night out in Havre. Make sure you attack it at the right direction so the fat and goo flies away from the feathers . Get in there real good, and get out all that crap that is left in there if you use only one of those kits that have bug and smell trouble at times. Now, take a can of brake clean and spray out and degrease that area with carefull aim and let it dry a few minutes. Rub in the Borax that the mounting kit came with, or buy some from a taxidermy supply place, but get it in real good.
Whip up a batch of Bondo, about the size of say a lemon, and lay your fan out on some cardboard and arrange the loose and floppy feather as best as you can making sure the proper feather over feather overlap is correct, and spoon or putty knife bondo into the area that used to be all that meat and fat. Arrange the feather all spread again the way you like it, work fast, and make sure to pull the skin back down over the bondo and flatten that whole area a bit so it fits into the wooden tail holder that comes with the kit. When the bondo set in 5-10 minutes, it is rock solid and can be hung up right away with or without the wooden plague.
This is the way to go, trust me on it. I like to get a couple tails saved up and do all of them at once as it makes a mess when you wire wheel the goo out from the quills. But this will keep you from tacking it on cardboard and waiting for it to dry, plus no worries about bugs in the future. This is how we do it on the tails of full body mounts.
