How To Properly Play With Feather Shuttles

When you first buy feather shuttles, there may be some things you don’t know about. Unlike nylon/plastic shuttles, playing with feather shuttles requires you to do a few things before playing. Of course, you don’t have to do these things but they are very beneficial to the shuttle and your game.

So here’s how to properly play with feather shuttles.

Humidifying

Before you play a game, humidifying shuttles make the shuttle much more durable. I have 3 ways for humidifying shuttles, boiling water, showering, and using a humidome.

The first one is boiling water. You should have a kettle of some sort in which you boil some water. Take off both lids of your shuttle tube. Then put the tube over the steam for 1 minute or until you see steam come out of the top of the tube.

 

The second way is showering. If you take hot showers, close the bathroom doors and take the shuttles out of the tube. Then lay the shuttles on the floor or counter top so that it gets steamed during your shower.

The last method is using the humidome. If you don’t know what it is, check it out here. The basic steps of using this humidome is to submerge it into clean water for around 4 hours or until its beads are large. Then you replace one of your shuttle tube lids with this one.

Testing and Tipping

Now that you humidified your shuttles, it’s time to get on the actual court. But wait, before you start playing games, you should test and tip the bird. When we test the shuttle, we are testing its speed and tipping is bending the tip of the shuttle’s feather which is meant to slow down the bird if it’s too fast.

We test a shuttle by standing all the way at the baseline and then hitting it to the other side. There isn’t a good way that I can explain how to analyze the speed of the shuttle except by the feel. Then we tip it depending on if it feels too fast, slightly fast, or just right. If it’s just right, you don’t need to tip it.

Tipping a Feather

Tipping 4

Tipping 4 is a good way to tip if the bird is just slightly too fast. If you don’t know how much you need to tip but the shuttle feels fast overall, then tipping 4 is also a good way to start since you can always change it after.

Here’s how you tip 4. Start on any feather and then bend the tip. Count 4 clockwise or counter-clockwise (just make it consistent) and then bend the 4th feather. Count 4 again and bend the 4th feather. Keep going until you reach the first feather you’ve bent.

Tipping 2

Tipping 2 is what you do if you think the shuttle is way too fast or if it’s still fast after tipping 4. You tip 2 the same way you tip 4 except you count 2s instead.

If after tipping 2, it’s still too fast, you’ll just have to deal with it because tipping 1 messes up the shuttle’s flight pattern. Lower quality shuttles will require you to tip more while higher qualities require less tipping.

Conclusion

In this short article, you learned that you should humidify your shuttles, test them, and then tip them to adjust the speed. Doing these quick things will improve durability of your shuttles and make them better to play with.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below, and as always, good luck in your games and have a great day!