who mounts their own fan and beard? pics please

I do... but I have no pics online right now. I use the quaker boy fan mount plaques.
I cut the fan off and pin it w/ small nails to a board or piece of cardboard and salt continuosly for several months until dry and hard. I also salt the meat at the end of the beard.
I take the brass off of the shell I shot the bird with and hot glue the beard into it and drop it in the hole at the bottom of the plaque.
They come out very nice and are not very hard to do.

Salt alone simply dries the tissue, and provides a little flavor for bugs (they will find it). ALL meat, fat, and tissue MUST be removed, and then borax applied to dry.

Magis is right, do it right or don't do it at all. It's not that hard to do it right!

Here's one of many Ive done.

looks nice strut.

One extra step I'm going to do with mine after they come out of the boraxis to "hot glue" the exposed areas after they are cured as well as the area at the base of the quills to seal and keep them from ever coming out of position.

I have a hot glue that will work perfect.

customer's tail

Very nice results! I have done a few in the past and I put the fleshy part of the fan in kerosine and let it soak for a day or so. The kerosine breaks apart the fatty, fleshy stuff that is on the quills and then I let that air dry and keep a constant supply of borax on the quills for several weeks.

Here's one of the two fans in my office. The spurs are short on account of being rubbed downby the rocks where hegrew up.

You could also try sealing the base with silicon after boraxing. I did one last year. All I did was put silicon on some wax paper, set the dry base on the silicon, then applied more to the back and folded the wax paper over on it. It took about a week to set hard, but the paper peeled right off and it worked fine. Sealing is a good idea though, whatever you choose to do it with.

Here's a pic of one of my mounts from last year. Kinda simple, but it was the first one I made on my own, thought it was neat. The fan wasn't complete as I had a brain fart and pulled away the front feathers, which are the most colorful. I just put a new fan in it from this year and it looks much better.