I just bought some 5" RW Gatewayfeathers from Bass Pro, and when I glue them to my arrow the middle of the feather won't contact the arrow. It's like a slight bow in the feather. I am usinga Grayling jig, and have glued lots of my own feathers, never encoutering this problem. I have made adjustments to the jig with no change.

Any ideas?

I have the same jig & usually dont have any troubles. Sometimes tho for whatever reason the feathers (Gateway) are curled pretty good & the clamp wont hold them straight. I pretty much got in the habbit of putting a feather in the clamp & pulling the center out just a hair. Then when I seat it in the jig I push it down till its all contacting the shaft. The feather gets pushed into the clamp by the shaft & conforms itself to the shaft kinda. Dunno if that will help but its what I do.

i have not had too much trouble gluein on feathers with my graylin but i do have to say that for me the truflight feathers were easyer and the bases were more consistent

i have a Bitzenburger that works GREAT.I'll sand down the foot of the feather before I fletch.This gets the feather flatter to to the shaft,,no thick white base.Even makes them a hair lighter.
I fletched an AXIS shaftwith feathers last week,,just to see how much helical I could get seated on that small diameter.Came out GREAT !!!.
I love feather fletch.Sure, they have their bad points,but man can they steer a broad head

I recommend forgetting glue for feathers and switching to Bohning fletching tape. I haven't glued a feather on a shaft since I got my first roll of the stuff. It's worked like a champ on aluminum, carbon (black and camo'ed), fiberglass and wood arrows - with all kinds of finishes on the wood arrows, lacquer, polyurethane, paint.... I have yet to run into an arrow it won't stick to.

With the tape,I put the clamp into the jig and then run a fingernail down the length of the base, making sure it's stuck all the way along. Then when I remove the clamp, I do it again on both sides of the base, just for insurance. Then I move to the next feather. When I take the arrow out of the jig, I put a dot of glue on each end of the feather, again for insurance and to avoid feather cuts (my knuckle is my arrow rest with my selfbows.)

The feathersare stuck and stay stuck until I decide it's time to refletch. Then they just peel off. You have to clean off a little adhesive residue, but the onlyscraping you do is to get off the two dots of glue on each feather.

Switch to the tape, then you can make fun of the guys shooting vanes because they still have to struggle with glue.[8D]

The only downside I've found with the tape is it seems to have a limited shelf life. If you haven't used it up in a year's time, it doesn't seem to work quite as well. When it gets old, you have to let the arrows sit overnight before using them to get the best adhesion.

Hey, I had to think of SOMETHING bad to say about the stuff.I really like it.