Yes, although I don't think it was boiling water, just hot. And the chicken had to be dipped more than once throughout the de-feathering process to really soften it up. There is a much easier method though in which you use a tub-like apparatus that spins the chicken around inside it, and there are rubber claws around the inside that gently and efficiently de-feather it for you. That's what my bandmate does when he's alone or short on time, but we wanted to do it by hand as a bonding experience. And yes, it was totally featherless before we gutted it. One interesting thing I did not know until I did all this is that there are people in the world who eat pretty much all the organs inside a chicken. All the things I'd normally throw out - liver, gizzard, weirdly phallic neck bone - are apparently considered delicacies by a lot of people, so he packages them and sells them by the pound.