numpty questions about feathers

[stuckinthemud]

Afternoon!
I collected a bag of swan and goose feathers from the local pond, don't know if their primaries or tails or whatever. I shoot lefty. Someone said feather flights need to be handed? Something about a smooth side and a rough side? Also, the feathers are curved, so do I put them on straightened out? Was going to use two goose flights with a swan king flight. This is for 3-d and target shooting not hunting.
Thanks

[Pat B]

As long as all came from the same side, left or right, it doesn't matter which side you use on an arrow. I have arrows with left wing feathers and some with right wing and they fly the same. Also, each feather has a left and a right side. Tail and secondary feathers usually have a left and right side so keep them together also.

[aaron]

Tail feathers are pretty symetrical along the long axis with each half like a mirror image of the other. No need to sort these into rights and lefts.
primaries and secondaries are wing feathers and are not symetrical... one side will have  shorter barbs. The primaries have much much shorter barbs on one side, while the secondaries less so.
If you put a feather down with the CURVE DOWNWARD and the quill toward you, A right wing feather will have the longer barbs on the right side. It is the longer side barbs that you use for fletching.below is a right wing feather

[aaron]

This is a tail feather. Some are less symetrical and may need to be seperated into rights and lefts as described above

[DC]

I used some tail feathers and secondaries. I split them and one side matched the right wing and the other matched the left wing. Close enough for the girls I go with.

[Buck67]

You might want to put the feathers in a Zip Lock bag with a few Mothballs for a month or two to make sure that you don't have any hitchhiking bugs on the feathers.  There is a small beetle that thinks that all that protein in one place makes for a dandy meal.  They aren't too picky, they will eat other things in your house as well.

[DC]

+1 on that!

[stuckinthemud]

Thanks All, looks like I mostly got tail feathers, but this is all really useful info 

[DesertDisciple]

What everyone else said. As long as all the feathers on an arrow came from the same wing side you're in business. Wing feathers are naturally more helical in nature so lend themselves to helical fletching clamps. I would personally save tail feathers for flu-flus, but many folks use wraps and twists to secure fletching rather than jigs, so they may do well in that respect.

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Tail feathers are also good for the eastern two-fletch.

[stuckinthemud]

I've only made 8 arrows in total.  My first 3 were with commercial flights super-glued on to sharpened hazel shoots; the second set of 5 were goose feather flights on hazel shoots with horn insert nocks and antler tips; flights were super-glued with cotton sewing thread wraps.  Next set will be similar but I'm thinking of experimenting with a bees-wax verdigris. Any thoughts?