ORIGINAL: buckeye
I see exactly what you are talking about buckeye and I agree you will have some of the vane on a helical fletch pass through the black bristles. However the rest of the arrow is still being supported by the other bristles and while the black bristles are stiffer they are not that different to where you get an erratic arrow flight.
Not exactly the point I was trying to make....
Go nock a helical arrow on your bowstring... Slowly pull the arrow thru the WB and let me know what the vanes do, especially the hen vanes....
My problem with shooting a helical fletch thru the wb is the fletching is commited to it's path as the leading edge of the vane dictates where it "cuts" thru the bristles at..... The back end of the fletching is in for a ruff ride.
IMO I would not shoota helical arrow thru a wb.... I have used a wb in the past as well, so I am not a hater... I am only saying that it has it's limitations.
Ah....I see now.I did what you asked and slowly pulled a helical fletched arrow through the biscuit. I can see where you're coming from and how the whole fletch takes the path that the front cut causing the rear of the fletch to kinda fold over.
However, the problem (as Isee it) is, when shot from your bow, the arrow doesn't move slowly through the biscuit, it's moving at a high rate of speedand the bristles are soft enough to where you actually have bristle displacementcaused by the vanes. I believe there was a slow motion video showing a Whisker Biscuit in action. It was made to show how much it wobbles after the shot. I don't want to get into all that was "set up" with that video to make the rest look bad I just want to bring to your attention what the bristlesdid when an arrowwas shot through it at fullspeed. It showsjust how the bristles will get displaced by the fletchings after they initially slice into it. They proved to be very flexible and it wasn't even the newer designed softer B-2 biscuit, it was the older all black one.
The length of the bristles are what give it it's flexibility to allow the vanes to push through them rather than slice through. Yet they will still support the arrow because it (the arrow) rests on the ends of many bristles (strength in numbers). At speed you won't get the same results as you do when you slowly pull an arrow through it. The leading edge of the vane doesn't "dictate" where the back edge goes, there's some bristle displacement that occurs.
Now the bristles on the Hostage rest I testedwere the exactopposite, they werevery short and stiff. They areno where nearas flexible as the W/B bristles. If a helical, or anything more than 4Deg vane were to start to "cut" through one of them (and they will) I seriously doubt they will be as forgiving as the W/B bristles. This, along with what Ifelt was inconsistent fletch contact, is what was giving me my poor results with that rest.