4 Personal Rest Reviews

[Greg Krause]

A little while back BT asked me to do a review on the rests I have used. I'll give you all the facts about them and my personal experience with them, the good, the bad and the ugly. Here you go.

QAD Ultra-Rest

How it works:
The rest is made to hold an arrow in the upright position, fully captured. A rope is attached to the down cable from the rest when the bow is drawn, it "sets' the rest. When the bow is released the rest falls away, allowing complete fletching clearance. If you have to let down from full draw, the rest will not fall. It stays in the upright position and keeps the arrow captured. To "un-odd" the rest, you simply use your thumb on your bow hand to flip a small lever on the rest.
My experience:
This was the first Drop away rest I ever used. Ray was the first to buy it and after seeing how well it worked for him, I decided to buy one. It worked just how it was supposed to and was easy to set up. i used it for 2 years and never had a problem and I am not very easy on my gear. You all know that i spend a lot of time in the woods as well as shooting in the yard. Ray had an issue with his first rest. In the cold weather (less than 30 degrees) it wouldn't stay in the upright position. This did not effect the working of the rest, it just didn't allow you to keep it odded. It would still come up as you drew the bow. He sent it to the company and they replaced it and had no problems with the next one he got. The one I started with, is now on my dads bow and working well. I have other friends that have this rest for years and have had no trouble with it at all.
The bow shop I use was really "pushing" these rests, because they were so good. It turned out that they( the shop)was seeing a 20% failure rate in cold weather. either not staying up(like rays) or much worse.......not falling. it has something to do with the rubber washers. The ones that had no problems, last years with no problems. They have stopped selling so many of these rests but when the do this is what they have been reccomending. when you get the new rest, put it in the freezer for a day, then shoot it. If it works fine, you have a great rest that will last a very long time. If it doesen't work, send it back and start again. the company is very good about replacing the rests.
Don't get me wrong if you get a good one, it is a very reliable rest. It is only on some and in very cold weather, where there are problems. If you want to go through checking them or if you are from down south where you don't see such cold weather, i'd say go for it.

Next up -The Ripcord

[michihunter]

I think it's a good rest myself but with all drop aways comes mechanics. And with mechanics come failure. Skip- What would be the reswult of misting the rest (emulating freezing drizzle) and then putting it in the freezer?

[Greg Krause]

I beleive you could mist it but all the problems I have seen/ heard of, have been due to the washer inside shrinking and expanding in cold weather.
I want to stress that I do like this rest but I would personally do the freezer thing or leave it outside for a day or so in the winter before hunting cold weather with it. I have not heard or seen the rest work in this kind of weather and then fail. even rays would work fine once it was in the house or truck for a while, the problem was always cold weather. we leave our bows outside all season long, under a gazibo........they get cold.

[Greg Krause]

The Ripcord


How it works:
This rest is very similar to the QAD. the main difference is that if you let down, after drawing, the arrow rest will come down. While waiting, the rest stays up and fully captures the arrow. Again, the rest is attached to the down cable with a cord.
My experience:
Ray and I both use this rest, a bunch of the guys at the local shop also use them. They work great and are easy to use/set up. Ray and I have used it for a year now. The only problem that occured was on my rest. I had tried to adjust the windage with a cheap set of allen keys and stripped out the bolt. I went to the shop to see if they could help me get the bolt out and see if they had another bolt for it. well we got it out, but we needed to hammer a larger size star bit into it. we hammered on it quite a bit. after getting it all fixed, the rest was not dropping fast enough to clear my fletchings. we took the rest apart, all the internal parts and all. put it back together and had no problems since. No one else I know has had any problems.
I really like this rest and it is on my Trykon and another is set aside for my Vulcan.

[michihunter]

Skip- If the rest drops upon letting down, doesn't that basuically eliminate the containment feature? I mean, who needs containment once the bow is drawn? It's prior to drawing that makes containment a benefit IMO.

[Greg Krause]

It stays in a set position before and through the draw, keeping it full contained, until you release or let down. once you let down, you can either draw the bow, bringing the rest into the upright position with the cord attched to the cable or you can flip the rest back up with your thumb. so it keeps the arrow fully contained while waiting on stand or stalking through the woods.

[Greg Krause]

The Cobra Diamondback


How it works:
The rest uses a cord attached to you down cable, that raises the prongs as you draw. when you release, the cable comes up and a spring in the rests housing drives the prongs down out of the way. While at rest, the prongs lie flat on your shelf. Below/bhind the prongs, there is a groove molded into the rest that helps make sure your arrow in in the center of the prongs as you draw. The rest allows you to adjust spring tension, to speed up the drop. It has hatch marks on it to allow easy left/right adjustments and an allen screw that you turn to raise and lower the height of the rest.
My Experience:
I only used this rest for a short time. It worked very well and is nearly foolproof as long as it is set up correctly. There were only 2 things about this rest that I didn't really care for. The first one is that I found you had to have your fletchings lined up perfect to get good clearance. You shoot odd fletch up and you have to make sure it is perfectly straight up. The nocks on my CX shafts turn easily and I had to make sure they stayed perfect. The second thing was that there was no marks to see when adjusting the height of the rest. It would have been much simpler to tune if you could see how much you were raising or loweing the rest with each turn of the allen key. other than that, it was a good quality rest. I opted for a full containment rest instead of the Diamondback for hunting, because it makes life easier.

[Greg Krause]

Whisker Biscuit


How it works:
This is a very simple containment rest. It mounts on easily and the deluxe has hatch marks for easy adjustments when tuning. The Quick Shot makes for easy loading/unloading of the arrow through the opening. The bristles fully support the shaft at any angle, so there is no chance the arrow will fall off the rest. The fletchings should be aligned so that none of them pass through the opening or black bristles. The balck bristles are stiffer and make sure they support even a heavy arrow. The brown ones are not as thick and allow for the vanes to pass through easier. There are diiferent size inserts, with different size holes to match the arrows you are shooting. This is about as basic and foolproof as you can get in a rest.
My Experience:
Very foolproof and effective rest. I put this rest through it's paces and never encountered a problem. i hunted hard with it for 3yrs. I like the new QS because before that we were cutting a notch out of the top corner of the insert with a hack saw. Now it's already done. I found the rest to be very quiet as well. People talk about the loss of speed, from what I have seen, it's very few FPS. The accuracy is very good as well. At very long range i noticed some effects over a drop away but the very little. It is meant for hunting anyway, where most shots are 35yds and closer. I beleive(can't prove it) that good form is more important with this rest than something like a dropaway. when i say good form, I really mean follow through. I just put one on the Hoyt I just picked up. There is no moving parts, springs or ropes. Unless you bend it(hard to do) there is little that can go wrong with it. I spray mine with the no snow they sell for it to keep it from freezing up in the cold wet weather. I found that most vanes and feathers will work with it without problems if you put a dab of glue on the leading edge of the fletch. I was using Marcos and AAE vanes with mine.

[shaman]

I'll add to the Whisker Biscuit review:

Ease of use, security of mind, and accurate enough that at the grassroots level my Bro is placing 2nd through 5th at local 3D events around the State. I placed 4th through 8th, but that is more my lack of ranging experience than the WB.

For highest level competition, a person probably wants something different. But for the cost in terms of hunting/hobbyist 3D/backyard shooting it can not be beat.

I've put hundreds, if not into the first thousand, of arrows through mine and it is showing hardly any wear at all. For those worried about the wear, a replacement disk every year for 5 years still only bring it up to the cost of a high end drop-away, with a lot less tuning issues.

Installing the WB is a breeze compared to most drop-aways for the average DIY'er. I find it hard to believe that for the average person that installing something that needs to tied down and timed with your draw is as easy to install as a fixed rest (prongs/WB).

You do need to tune your set-up to use the WB. Any set-up needs to be tuned. For drop aways it is the buss cable, for prong and WBs, it is the nock/vane alignment.

1. if there is dark markings on the vanes, then the shooter needs to rotate his nock a little more and clear the black bristles.

I've put hundreds of shots through my WB with little, if any, wrinkling. The waves I did get was from the vanes passing through/by the center. Once I figured out how my nock needs to be turned for my draw length, poundage, and arrow specifics... no more waves. No different than a prong rest or the NAP 360. People need to tweak their set-up for best performance.

2. to get rid of the waves there are two well known and noted solutions.
A. pass hot air over them with a blow dryer or candle. NOT close, just enough for them to warm up and straighten out.
B. put them in warm water. The warm water will also straighten the vanes without melting out the glue.

Just a bit of advice for those worried about using a WB and Wavy Vanes....

To keep the leading edge from catching and peeling back, put a dab of glue on the leading edge.

Lots and Lots and Lots of test show only like a 2-4fps slowdown with WB.

And Lastly,

There is no better endorsement than seeing people who make their living shooting a bow (all those hunting programs) shooting the WB as UNENDORSED equipment. On many of those shows you will not see Carolina Archery listed as a sponsor. The WB is the shooter chosen rest. When they need to make the shot that counts, so they can record the kill, put it on DVD, sell it, and put money in their bank, they use a WB.

Are WBs accurate? As accurate as you are out to 40 yrds definitely.

[Greg Krause]

Nice add shaman! As much as I like my dropaways, I still went back to the WB for this last bow. Nothing helps your confidence then having equipment that is bullet proof. The 3 years I used the WB, i took something like 18 deer. i believe I missed 2 and it had nothing to do with the rest. I can't think of a better rest for still hunting/stalking. I was never picked off because of drawing noise or my arrow hitting my riser with the WB.
The ONLY thing to watch for (IMO) is that the arrow does not get pushed down into the bristles. i once was stalking through some heavy brush and when i drew back on a deer, the arrow was not in the hole. I simply pushed the arrow up with a little pressure from my thumb. Had I not noticed, who knows where the arrow would have gone. I am in the habit to quickly look over my bow at full draw, before shooting so I picked up on it. Mind you that only happened once in all the time i used it.