Case filler with cream of wheat or extra wads?

My Pedersoli Sharps .45-70 seems to like 62g of OE 3f under a BACO Money bullet. That leaves a decent amount of case left to fill if I want to set the bullet with a minimal amount of freebore (I think that's the term). I know OE prefers some compression; the exact amount is TBD, but I'm guessing somewhere in the .125-.250" range. What do y’all prefer to do if you need to compress powder and take up case space? I can put in a couple of thick wads (I've got .05" and .125") or CoW (or some other filler), and I know I'll just have to experiment with both. But if there's a consensus or more common approach, I'd like to start there.

I have used RICE CRISPIES for so many years that I can't remember. when you shoot at the range it smells' like some one is backing cookies!

Cream of Wheat should work just fine for what you want to do. I’ve used it in other cartridges and know others who do as well. I put a card over the powder and another over the COW. You could also, fill the space with wads or a grease cookie if you wanted.

A grease cookie works but you need to compress before its inserted other wise it pushes past the wads.

A wad stack works but can get tedious inserting in the case in the correct order one at a time

Cream of wheat works well and is easy to use here. a thin wad over powder the cream of wheat and the needed wad on top.

I occasionally use cream oh wheat filler. I set up the powder measure for the charge hand set s playing card wad in by hand and have a second measure set up to throw the cream of wheat. I you have a dedicated load a simple dipper can be made to measure it. Once all is there it can b compressed in one pass.

Don't make this any harder than it needs to be; Cream of Wheat is often used but it has no magic quality so any easily obtainable fine ground and light weight, clean, dry and cheep space filler will do as well. Rice, grits, corn meal, used coffee grounds (dry), cob/nut case tumbling media, etc., will do the same thing.

I've found that an easily installed tuft of cotton pressed tightly down over the powder does about as well as any other "over powder" wad.

I suggest using dacron/polyester as the filler. COW can raise the pressure significantly. No guess, just fact based on actual pressure tests.

While I've not used it in BL loads, in smokeless loads I use laundry lint from a load of towels, (minimal cat hair) a pinch the size of my thumbnail will do.

I put 82 gr of 1.5 Swiss in my .45-70 loads. No fillers just a .06 wander the bullet

:D I read several times in the old books that they used wasp nests for wadding shooting the over the log rifles. Might be something to that ?????

If a full load of black in a .45-70 is too much recoil one might think getting a smaller caliber. Incorrect loading fillers can create a problem.

Don't droptube your powder. and don't use a money bullet with reduced front bands. and if it shoots well, why change a thing?

Corn meal works well also.

A follow-up question. Given that an air gap between powder and boolit is a bad thing, how would dacron/poly or dryer lint work? Those are so fluffy as to seem like they would mostly be air, so I would have thought you'd need a fairly good sized wad of that to make it work.

Otherwise, those ideas all sound viable and make sense. I'm hovering around 2.5 to 3 MOA so I just want to see if I can get down to 2 MOA.

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Originally Posted by Lead pot

I put 82 gr of 1.5 Swiss in my .45-70 loads. No fillers just a .06 wander the bullet

:D I read several times in the old books that they used wasp nests for wadding shooting the over the log rifles. Might be something to that ?????

If a full load of black in a .45-70 is too much recoil one might think getting a smaller caliber. Incorrect loading fillers can create a problem.

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I must be doin somethin wrong! I drop tube 80 grains of powder ina case - she's full - right to overflowin - squash it down some gets a wad in - no room for da boolit

63 grains + a 45thou wad + 535 grain boolit kissin on the lands is aboot all the room I can find.?

remember that COW, will add weight to the load. RICE CRISPIES weigh nothing. also a cotton ball can be used. jmho.

COW, is used in fire forming brass, because of the pressure generated by it when ignited. as Larry Gibson said.

I use "Kapok", also called dacron/polyester, to fill the airspace in a cartridge. About a "pinch" (1/2 grain) keeps the powder near the primer and velocity has always proven to be consistent. I've always had a bias about using cream of wheat because I didn't like the possibility of getting it mixed with the powder; plus I was never fond of eating it, so I never kept it around:bigsmyl2:

COW has other issues. Over time, it "cakes" and that can cause a pressure problem. This was investigated by a guy years ago who loaded a bunch of .45 LC and tested the loads every few months. It was pretty dramatic.

IIRC that testing was done with smokeless powder so it may be different with black power where the amount of filler will be much less.

What Larry and dverna said. It's been proven so many times with pressure tests it should be common knowledge. I swore off any fillers like COW decades ago when working with a double rifle. I believe I'd be using a heavier charge of powder to take up space rather than fiber wads or something like COW.

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Originally Posted by indian joe

I must be doin somethin wrong! I drop tube 80 grains of powder ina case - she's full - right to overflowin - squash it down some gets a wad in - no room for da boolit

63 grains + a 45thou wad + 535 grain boolit kissin on the lands is aboot all the room I can find.?

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Put diapers on that projectile and it will fit with 80-82 grains :D

Kurt

Ok, the extra pressure from CoW is new info to me, but it does make sense. I'll try some extra wads, and if that doesn't get me where I want, then I'll try the rice Krispy idea.

I have used coconut charcoal 20/50 size.
It looks about the same size as 3F Black Powder so it meters well & compresses about the same.

If you’re at 2.5 to 3 MOA, you don’t need filler you need more powder.

KW

"The OP Wrote: "My Pedersoli Sharps .45-70 seems to like 62g of OE 3f under a BACO Money bullet. That leaves a decent amount of case left to fill"
I agree Kenny.

First question is, How do you know your rifle seems to like this load - have you been shooting this load?
The second question is, what accuracy does your current 62 grain produce?
I am not trying to be hard on you but I think you are going about this the hard way. You do have some good information about your rifle chamber and bullet, you know how far out of the case to seat the bullet to touch or be very close to the rifling.

My advice is, start with that over-all-length and fill the case up under the bullet with powder, no filler, and then test that and increase the powder charge one or two grains at a time until accuracy gets good and refine the amount of powder from there until you have the most accurate load.
You can play with all the other variables after that. This way you will have a baseline load.

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Originally Posted by 1hole

Don't make this any harder than it needs to be; Cream of Wheat is often used but it has no magic quality so any easily obtainable fine ground and light weight, clean, dry and cheep space filler will do as well. Rice, grits, corn meal, used coffee grounds (dry), cob/nut case tumbling media, etc., will do the same thing.

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I just loaded a number of rounds using dry used coffee grounds as filler - and it seemed to me it was very dirty, almost like using black powder. I do have a lot of case tumbling media since I went to wet cleaning so maybe I'll try that.

Edit...Appologies..My experience was with Smokeless 44 Mag...I slink away now!!

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Originally Posted by kaiser

I use "Kapok", also called dacron/polyester, to fill the airspace in a cartridge. About a "pinch" (1/2 grain) keeps the powder near the primer and velocity has always proven to be consistent. I've always had a bias about using cream of wheat because I didn't like the possibility of getting it mixed with the powder; plus I was never fond of eating it, so I never kept it around:bigsmyl2:

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Kapok is not dacryon/polyester. Kapok is a plant-based fiber, polyester is synthetic. I expect they are interchangeable in this application, but I can't be sure. Kapok has many differences with polyester.

Tim

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Originally Posted by tnlonghunter

My Pedersoli Sharps .45-70 seems to like 62g of OE 3f under a BACO Money bullet. That leaves a decent amount of case left to fill if I want to set the bullet with a minimal amount of freebore (I think that's the term). I know OE prefers some compression; the exact amount is TBD, but I'm guessing somewhere in the .125-.250" range. What do y’all prefer to do if you need to compress powder and take up case space? I can put in a couple of thick wads (I've got .05" and .125") or CoW (or some other filler), and I know I'll just have to experiment with both. But if there's a consensus or more common approach, I'd like to start there.

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Freebore is created when the rifle is chambered (not a feature of a cartridge) and on a 45-70 is usually quite short. What I think you are talking about is what is most often called, "jump to lands" and yes, it is set by how deeply you seat the bullet. You are right in thinking you should keep this to a minimum for best accuracy.
Tim