The art of Filler Useage

[Pirate69]

Not sure if this is the correct place for this tread; but I will put it here anyway. I am interested in the use of fillers for light loads. I looked through the stickies and did not see one on the "art of". I may have missed it.

I have noticed is recent posts that there are different opinions of using fillers and whether they are safe or not. In fact, it has been implied, if not stated, that individuals having problems with fillers just don't know how to use them. OK, that may be true. But how do we learn about them other than picking up information piece meal? Is there a thread somewhat that addresses this thoroughly? If not, I would be nice if someone could put together something.

[BruceB]

My sweet Lord.

I just did a search for the single word, "dacron" and the site gives me forty-four PAGES of hits.

Not everything comes packaged for our convenience, and this is one of the things that doesn't. The subject is one that keeps changing, as well as staying the same....does that make sense? New angles are forever being raised for discussion, even while the basic rules for successful use seem to be largely agreed-upon...I say "largely" because there's still very lively debate about should-we, may-we, might- we, could-we, how-about-we.......

It comes down to caution, wisdom, discussion, and above all personal experience and opinion. Do the reading, do the loading, make up one's own mind.

For my part, I use ONLY dacron (polyester fiberfill), and I regard it as an extremely valuable ally in my own load research. Granular fillers are used by many handloaders, but I find that dacron serves my needs without the added (possible) complications of other fillers.

[longbow]

As BruceB says, there are lots of posts about fillers. There are also different reasons for using them.

I am no expert by any means and will not pretend to be one. My use of fillers has been almost striclty using granular or wad style fillers to take up space in light loaded cartridges both straight walled and bottleneck.

My original goal with a .45-70 was to protect the base of a plain base boolit when using top end loads in a Marlin 1895 or a Siamese Mauser converted to .45-70. For that I used .410 shotgun fiber wads. They worked very well and eliminated leading with no sign of high pressures. These were top end loads from the Hornady manual not insanely hot upper end handloads.

Lately my goal is much the same but with a .303. I have been using mainly Cream O' Wheat under plain base boolits and gas check boolits without gas checks with good success. I am finding that I get about equivalent performance to gas check boolits using the filler and no gas checks. Also, I wanted to be able to use medium to slow powders without the loading density getting too low.

The granular filler has been working well for me showing no signs of problems and no signs of high pressures at the loads I am working up. One of the keys being to work up the loads using filler, not just adding filler to an existing load especially if it is already a high pressure load.

Many use Dacron or other "puffy" stuff to hold powders back against the primer for better ignition with light loads as BruceB mentioned. I have little experience there.

Some reading that may help you ~ at least on use of granular fillers:

http://www.303british.com/id37.html
http://www.surplusrifle.com/shooting...ller/index.asp
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=72897
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=70923
http://www.pufflon.com/newfront.html

I will leave it to the fellows with experience using Dacron, kapok or other puffy fillers to fill you in there.

I agree that there are a variety of opinions and much hearsay with regards to fillers. It would be very nice to get some pressure tested data to work with. Probably the closest I have seen is the work Larry Gibson is currently doing with the 6.5 Swede using shotgun buffer.

I hope that helps some anyway.

Longbow

[.357]

I'm still working on a filler load for my .223 using red dot However I can't remember who suggested it but i've been using dryer fuzz from the lint trap, works pretty well and it's free.

[303Guy]

... I've been using dryer fuzz from the lint trap, works pretty well and it's free.

I collected my first 'lot' of dryer lint (realizing that the damn thing is slowly destroying my clothes) then it died on me and got thrown away and now I have a de-humidifyer drying my washing - no lint! Dacron seems to be the bees knees but does not take up free space. I'm interested in granular fillers too with the same thinking that longbow has. I'm wondering whether cornmeal would work in my 303 Brit. (Some or all of them!)

[Char-Gar]

We have done fillers to death on more than one occasion over the past dozen years. Keep on looking it is there.