hickstick,
Try glueing your templates to the inside of a binder clip. The binder clip holds your feather in place while you cut around it. If you use thin sharp scissors, you can get perfect cuts. Been doing it that way for a long time and see no need for a chopper or a burner.

Burning also yields three feathers on each arrow that are exactly the same.  When they're chopped, cut or purchased, there's sometimes a little variation in feather heighth or length.  Not enough to affect performance though, at least not enough so any of us would notice it.

I use a burner  outside on the porch, You can make any shape an every one is identical, If you have fancy caps and crests you can burn them if your not careful, I make my own natural turkey feathers an burn them to what ever shape suits me.

burner is the way to go but it stinks like burning hair..  choppers for me are cool cause you can send in a custom shaped feather and they will send you back a chopper to cut it (burner does the same but it still smells-->>oohh Gaawwd)

buying them convienent but you don't get the extra flu flu cuts for free...

I guess it will be the chopper cutting our "EV Howlers" oh how they sound sooo sweet!

If we are talking about cost then pre cut is very expensive, and you can only get the shapes that are very common. A chopper is noisy, time consuming and can be inaccurate. I have used a burner for about 10 years and I love it. I kinda like the smell but then some think I'm a little sick.If I 4 fletch I usually get 2 4" fletches from one full length feather. All the fletches are exactly the same dimension from the shaft and over the long run I think the burner is the cheapest there is.