Sometimes vintage or new Ostrich feathers come with a broken tip end or, it happens at some point or, you are trying to match the shape of one feather to another so you can sew them together; do not hesitate to trim/shape the tip end. Here are some examples.
These two Ostrich feathers are the tip end of two much larger feathers. I saved them from a damaged Edwardian fan. I’m going to use them in a hair ornament.
In this picture you can see all 6 of the feathers (three on bottom and 3 above) that came from the fan and if you look closely you can see that all of the tips have been trimmed which is something you do not notice at first glance.
This is a navy blue ostrich feather. It was trimmed to be narrower and curled at some point but if you look at the tip you can see that it is missing and was broken back two or three inches from the original tip of the feather.
I chose to trim the feather back so it could be used again.
Example:
This is a feather with a couple issues, the barbs on one side of the feather are not fluffed out near their ends, the tip is messy/discolored and it much wider on the left side (bottom in image).
The first thing I did was to trim back those barbs on the left side (bottom and right in image). To trim a ostrich like this it best to cut the barbs at and angle.
Then I trimmed back the tip one side at a time to create a wide “U” shape graduating back about 3 or 4 inches to the natural length of the original barbs.
It’s best to curl the feather as close to the tip end as you can because that gives it a more natural look. Check out my article on this site. Or if you want to hand curl your Ostrich can use the same method shown in my article on Goose feathers all you need is a fairly dull pair of scissors so you do not damage the barbs.