The methods of splitting and cutting that I first outline are for a shaft that has been just heat treated. And what happens is that the transparent tube goes opaque from the heat and it gets both harder and more brittle, so that the splitting technique outlined below works really well and the point stays around for a good four to six pages. The top shaft, below, has been just heat treated, and the bottom one is how it looks before it's been treated at all. The tube should shrink a little, feel more solid than the untreated tube. It also allows recutting by simply splitting the split a bit further and recutting the tip.

The second technique for tempering involves *first* soaking the bare shaft in water overnight. The transparent tube goes opaque with the soaking. Then stick it in the hot sand, and it will go transparent again after the long heat treatment in the hot sand. The tube from this treatment will be just as tough as the just-heat treated tube, but it will be less brittle and more flexible. It also becomes nearly impossible to split in the normal order of cutting.

This actually lines up with historic data that indicates that only four or five good points could be gotten from a quill, as without being able to just further the split, the split has to be restarted *opposite* the original tip. So re-tipping this kind of tube has an entirely different set of steps once the original split has been used up.

The flexibility of the tube, though, after both water and heat treatment is marvelous for writing, and the tube material seems to take as long to wear as with the more brittle just heat treated hardness without sacrificing flexibility. It's a trade off in many ways. The one thing is that with the heat-only method, I've had a fairly significant number of tube just shatter when I tried to cut them. That might more than make up for the length of tube that gets cut for points on the more reslient tube.

There are a few other methods of tempering that I've heard of or tried and discarded. One is putting a can of sand on a burner on the stove, and that's one that I haven't tried or wanted to try or even feel there's a need to try. As the person who does do this regularly says that it's imperative to watch the feathers so that they don't burn. It seems non-useful and more dangerous than I need. The tempering that's done just in the hot sand *out* of the heat source seems to be plenty and there's no risk of burns or burning the tubes. I've also avoided fire, ashes, and direct applications of fire or heat sources.

I have tried tempering nibs after they've been cut, but every single one had the tines split further from each other, rendering the tip pretty much non-functioning. Another I've tried is using a hair dryer, but the heat isn't even enough and the tube shrinks unevenly. Not a good thing.

2. Stripping

There are a number of ways to strip your feathers. This is mostly the removal of the plume to get it out of the way of the writer's hand. The bare minimum is to strip off the lowest barbs and as much as is necessary to clear a space for the hand. Just use the edge of the knife and carefully scrape the bits of plume away until the shaft underneath is smooth.

There's a cool company that makes quills for Pendemonium that I would actually recommend. They do a stripped Elizabethen/Shakespearian quill that is a marvel of construction. The problem with the ones I recieved, though, were fairly minor, but I had to fix them a little to get them to really write without splattering ink everywhere. I had to broaden the tip just a bit. They weren't tempered as much as I temper mine, which may not have been an oversight as what they did is adequate for one time use; and they'd actually cut the tip the wrong way for the way the feather curved. At least for how I'm comfortable holding, using and writing with a quill. The slit, however, was really nice, and the curvature was a very good thing to study of how they'd cut the tines. The beauty of them, though, was in the stripping of some really strong feathers. They'd taken one side completely off. The other side has this magical cut edge that's very smooth and strong. Every time I cut the plume just away from the shaft, I can never get it that smooth. I would definitely recommend these quills if you really don't want to cut them yourself, and at $10 for two, it's cheap compared to anything else I've seen.

I also did a thing where I left the narrow edge and just used scissors to cut along the line of the rib to take off the majority of the larger plume, just to get it out of the way. I've also just stripped of all of the larger half of the plume, it's clean and neat. It is easier to cut from the tip of the feather towards the root/nib end using scissors. It is easier to go the other way when using a knife to strip it clean. The picture shows the minimum in the middle, the commercial prep on top, and then my ragged utility quill on the bottom.