I don't know about anyone else but when I helped my neighbour do hers recently,and when I raised some the previous two years,I used pliers.The feathers are usually so hard to grasp that the pliers were the only thing that worked well.Of course,if your chickens are all pinfeathers this might not be an option.What about skinning the birds? Sherry

We just skin our birds, a whole lot easier.
Becky

we used to pluck our chickens but just recently started skinning them. It saves alot of time and alot of work.

My mother used to singe them by holding the plucked bird over an open flame and rotating it all directions till all the little hair like feathers were gone. A wadded up newspaper on the ground or in a fireplace will do.

Couldn't you also use a small butane torch, welder type to singe off the pin feathers?

Of course you can use a small torch to singe them but take more care as the flame is much hotter than a burning paper. You dont want to cook the skin yet. Lol
If you're baking or deep frying the chicken. it does so much better with the skin on. Several years ago I skinned the wild turkey that I killed. When I baked it in the oven the outer 1/4 inch of flesh got really dry and tough.

well, you can get a pinnig knife which will remove a large part of the pin feathers, you could use a chicken plucker which takes out all the feathers, you could skin them, you could use a propane tourch and singe them off, or just dunk them in hot water, pluck the dickens outa them and forget about it.

I can only assume that you scalded them...just below boiling point. And we always dunked the wing tips and tail feathers one more time. The pin feathers would release well enough to scrape most of them off with a table knife. The ones on wings and tail are a bit harder to do. Singing is for the hair on the bird, not the pin feathers. The problem may be in the killing method. If they are too stressed out, they will not release the feathers or pins very well.