I was wondering if anyone knew if the pillow ticking from walmart(hell as I call the place) would work? Its not made of the Dracon stuff everyone talks about but of Polyester. Would this work for a sub, or am I asking for a large dose of FAIL?

I beieve Dacron is just a brand name for polyester fiber. FWIW, the form that works the eaiest in geting equal wieghts of the stuff is in the form of batteing. Mostly, I use the 1/2" variety, alhough th /4" works well. For most brass in the basic 30-06 based ammo, a 1/2 x 1/2" square works quite well for me.
I just bought another roll of the stuff from Wally-World and it's marked High Loft Quilter's Polyester Batting. The sheet of batting is 81" x 96" x 1/2" and wil make one hell of a lot of 1/2" squares.FWIW, I go 3/4" for the 45/70.
Paul B.

Yes it is the same. I buy the bag called Garnetted polyester fiberfill. It has all nice fine strands without all the thicker, longer pieces that stick out of the case to drive you nuts getting them in.
The stuff does not burn in the gun. If you look hard you can find some downrange that is only dirty. Mostly it just scatters.

Nice! Thanks Guys! That will make life much easier when I get another lot of .308 sized ww's. I found I m getting better accuracy with the slower powders, so I will not need as much as some people with the pistol powders.

Thanks for the help! Any other tips are always welcomed!
Keep your guns close, Obama wants them.

I am using cotton wool as a filler. I also use slower powders that basically fill the case and it does seem to work well. Try as I might, I just cannot get any sign of the cotton igniting. In fact, it does not even scourch.

I have just started paper patching my cast bullets and it does seem to keep the bore clean. Range testing is still to come.

Personally I quit using fillers many years ago. I found little or no gain in accuracy. That coupled with the increasing number of reports from guys who ringed their chambers (as a result of the secondary projectile one creates inside a case when using fillers) caused me to give up on them.

However, if someone were to ask me what to use as a filler I would tell them to shy away from man-made synthetics as they tend to melt, not burn. When I experimented with polyester fillers I sometimes found a hard "star" of baked on melted plastic on the crowns of some guns, instead of a nice grease "star." Can't be good for the bore. My advise would be to scrounge up an old life vest. Each one holds enough kapok (dried milkweed) to last a lifetime of filling cases. It is the old tried-and-true filler.

quote:

My advise would be to scrounge up an old life vest

I might just have one lying around .... mmmm....
But what makes kapoc better than cotton wool? (I'm using it because that's what I have and is easily available - it makes a great bore cleaner when pushed down the bore in a tight wad with a cleaning rod).

There's a difference between fillers and wads. It's wads that are reputed to cause an occasional "ringing". Never had a problem with dacron "melting" or leaving a depsosit in the bore. Been shooting dacron with cast bullets for 40 years. Litterally shot thousands upon thousands of them, no problem.

Lots of hard concrete evidence abounds to show that dacron fillers (kapok does work fairly well also) increase the ignition consistency and greatly reduce "powder position sensitivity". Not with all powders but with most slow pistol powders (with lighter weight bullets), medium and slow burning powders a dacron filler most always improves accuracy.

I have started fires down range (in front of the shooting position with cotton and paper filler/wads. I also stay away from cereal type fillers. I don't use those any more. Dacron is easily available and easy to work with. Don't have to "scroung" for nothing.

Larry Gibson

quote:

I have started fires down range (in front of the shooting position with cotton and paper filler/wads.

That is interesting, Larry. I have only fired cotton ball fillers into my 'firing tube'. Never have I found one with any signs of getting hot. That is with 40gr AR2209 and other reduced charges of faster powders. With the AR2209 charges, the polyester cloth I use to 'catch' powder residue is often partially melted, but the cotton ball sits in the hole and is unscorched. Are there certain conditions that will ignite the cotton and maybe melt dacron?

303Guy

I've no idea about what condidtion may cause it. As i recall that occured back when i was using the cotton as wads with faster burning powders in large caliber rifles (45-70). Maybe there's a difference in burning when it is a filler vs a wad?

I don't use a cloth to catch powder reidue but I have picked up quite a bit of small tufts of dacron afte t it had been fired. Never found any melted, never had any residue in the barrel and I've shot more that several hundred a day without cleaning the rifle. I've also observed it floating down in front of the muzzle in recent tests with a heavy dose of dacron used.

The hole point here is that dacron fillers work, they decrease extreme spread, they increase accuracy. They do not work in every case, there are always exceptions. With the slower fast burning powders, medium burning powders and slow burning powders where loading density is less than 80% the use of the dacron filler is almost always benificial. This has been proven over and over again, there should be no doubt.

Larry Gibson

Thanks for that Larry.

Larry is right. I use 4759 in my 45-70 revolver rounds and have shot many, many test groups with and without Dacron, trying to get away from the trouble of stuffing some in. Even with this bulky powder my groups have always been smaller with the filler.

quote:

I use 4759 in my 45-70 revolver rounds ...

If one reads that quickly nothing seems amiss. But read it slowly and the words "Holy Cow" come to mind! 45-70 Revolver! Holy Cow!

quote:

If one reads that quickly nothing seems amiss. But read it slowly and the words "Holy Cow" come to mind! 45-70 Revolver! Holy Cow!

Yes, very pleasant to shoot too. Marko can attest to the unbelievable accuracy all the way to 500 meters. These are 50 yard groups with a variety of boolits and 1" is fairly easy at 100 yards.
One group here is 3/4" and the next after a sight adjustment is 7/16".
It is the most fun gun I ever had and actually recoils less then a .44.

Oh WOW! That is great! (Holy Cow!)

So..... has the 44mag just become extinct?

Hang on! I just looked closer at those groups! HOLY COW! That is great stuff! Thanks for that, bfrshooter. Now that is what I call a worthy handgun. Hooh Boy!

So, if the handgun can be so accurate with that cartridge, is there a reason why we don't see more rifles in that caliber? Single shot break actions for example? And what would be wrong with revolving carbines? Now there's an idea!

When you say recoils less that a 44mag, I asume you mean perceived recoil? Are those paper patched loads or normal cast?

Ummmm... Sorry for getting a bit side tracked here James! But you must admit it's interesting!

Actually, the BFR revolver will out shoot every rifle in 45-70 I have ever shot. And the BFR .475 is right on it's tail.
No, my .44 will never be out of date either.
Those are just regular boolits from molds I made, nothing special.
My passion has been making revolvers shoot like rifles. How they are loaded for is what counts although the BFR revolvers will shoot that way out of the box. Might need a trigger job is all.
Even Bioman (Scott) is shooting 1/2" groups at 50 yards with a new .44 SBH hunter. Whitworth (Marko) tears up targets and deer with his .44 and .475. We shoot out of a ladder stand off hand for deer practice and Marko hits little plastic water bottles out to 86 yards off hand. We can't set targets farther but down on the range he hit a pop can off hand at 100 yards.
They are doing better then me now because of my eyesight, too damned old at almost 72.
Never look down on a revolver, they are more fun and more accurate then you can ever imagine.

I don't know how you have missed all the targets I have posted. But here are average groups from the BFR .475 at 50 yards. The large target is 200 and the two right ones are 100. The can was two shots at 100 yards.
I have done much work for years but I still admit, I am still blown away with how a revolver can shoot. You will never know how many times I have walked down to the target to say "Holy crap."

I probably have seen them and probably said "Holy Cow"!

Somehow I don't remember the 45-70 bit. Someone has to 'invent' a 45-70 revolving carbine! (In my world, it is not permitted to hunt with a handgun. What I would like is a handy carbine for dense bush work that can fire five or six shots without actually doing much).

That makes me feel bad that you can't hunt with one. They are all I use after a few deer with a bow. I love to take a different revolver for each deer.
A carbine would be fun, just never get your arm under the cylinder. But a blast shield on the arm would work.

Damn sorry Guys, I m not getting email notification to let me know I have replys!
This is some wicked info, 303, from back in the 1860's there were a few cap and ball revolving carbines. I be leave Dixie gun works has a few.
I will be on later tonight to read and reply more.
James
Thanks for all your help!

Yes, Colt made one and there are repos but the 45-70 would be a lot more fun then a cap and ball.

Alot of good help here, thanks! and DAMN thats one hell of a pistol! Beats rim fires hands down! Unless your talking about the first made metallic case cartridges, those were all rim fires.
I think I have only met 2 or 3 guys who hunt with pistols, and they all hunted out of state, or bear. Of corse how do you miss a bear from 10 yds in a foot hold trap? (I have a friend who guides bear hunts on foot hold traps, he kills them with a 22 mag in the head! on shot between the eyes)

quote:

I have started fires down range (in front of the shooting position with cotton and paper filler/wads.

I have finally found out how to burn the cotton filler!



Light charge of fast powder and a case filled with cotton ball and you have a fire! In the pic it can be seen how the sizzled ball of cotton has scourched the cloth that caught it.

303Guy

I rest my case. Dacron is the way to go.

Larry Gibson

Baised on my use of Dacron in my double rifles, just be sure that the Dacron is compressed.

Every case of chamber ringing I have read about occured with a "tuft" ressed against the powder with air left between the bullet and the filler.

Even burning 100gr of IMR 4831, and using 5 grains of polyester, there has been no melting or burning of the poly.

With many of the Nitro Exress rounds you must use a filler or you will have hang fires.


With Nitro for Black loads in my 450 No2 I use twentyfive grains of poly.

N E 450 No2, does that mean the filler should be tight or just occupying the whole volume, even if it is not exactly 'compressed'?

I was surprized that the cotton burned and that the patch appeared to have been scorched. The powder charge was really small. I can only think that the bore friction held the bullet in the bore fore a longer than usual time period.

Why do fireman not wear cotton!!!

The filler should be fairly heavily compressed.

This keeps handling from creating airspace in the case.

Basically you cannot have too much compression, unless the bullet gets pushed out of the case after seating.

Not enough compression and you could have problems.

These are the rules followed by shooters of British Double Rifles, some that cost up to 100 thousand dollars or so.

I have fired around 5 thousand rounds or more in my big bore doubles with fillers, with no problems.

Thanks for that N E 450 No2.

quote:

Why do fireman not wear cotton!!!

True, but all my other cotton filled loads didn't scorch the cotton at all but this one load did. Of course, having been warned, I had no intentions of firing cotton filled loads in the field! (I did want to see what happens with cotton).

The interesting thing is that while some folks said not to use cotton, I found no problem, but - the problem was real! That was my lesson. Other warnings are real too!

We found out how to have fun with a 45-70 BPCR. We loaded a well compressed load of Pyrodex behind a 530 gr boolit. Accuracy sucked but then we found out why. Without the spotting scope I seen a flare come out of the barrel and burn in the grass. A compressed chunk of the stuff was just shooting out the end of a 34" barrel. We shot the rest just to watch flares!

Compressed Pyrodex? Wow! That must have been fun.

I have a question; I am now loading up PPCB's with a full house load of AR2209/H4350. There may be a tiny bit of air space and what I would like to do is fill that with compacted fibre filler. The idea is to protect the bullet base and assist in sealing the bore against possible flame cutting of the bullet. I only have cotton ball but do not want to set the countryside on fire so I didn't do it. But, will a small amount of tightly packed cotton fibre burn? A lightly packed cotton fiber filler did not show any scorching with a slightly lower charge.

Hey 303, can you get your hands on some pillow filler? That nylon filler is what the guys in the beginning of the thread were talking about, I think... :-P I will keep you up dated on the results of that.
Right now I working up loads for a 1903A3 Springfield with 220gr RN from Hornady. But the only issue now is that its costing so much for a box of copper jackets.
Anyone know where I can pick up some used swaging equipment?

I'm a heavy bullet fan myself. Have you considered paper patching? With the right sized mold there need not be any sizing whatever. They say that paper patched boolits can be driven at starting load velocities. Not bad if that happens to be a 220 grainer!

These are copper jacketed bullets. But I know what you mean about the heavy bullets. I personally like anything from mid range to heavy bullets.

I did realize that. I'm now out of work (recession thing) and have become more concious of shooting costs. I started experimenting with paper patching - quite challenging at first but fun too. The cost savings potential is quite great but it does take time and effort.

Have been using packing foam, punch cut to case diameter and trimmed to needed length to copress the Varget in my Nitro for Black loads. No ringing, consistent performance.

quote:

I'm now out of work (recession thing)

Wish I could have helped, if you had the tools of your old shop I was going to have ya make me some bullet dies.

Thanks, James.

I have now solved my 'empty case' filler problem. I fill the case with powder!
Paper patching means full power loads. In my 303 Brit I use a 80% case full of our very own AR2209 (H4350). Zero leading and a very clean bore. Accuracy is promising! (Three shots into the same hole in the mud bank). I did use a small wool wad I got as a sample. It fizzles up into a ball and smells of burnt wool. (Funny that).

I have a question; I am now loading up PPCB's with a full house load of AR2209/H4350. There may be a tiny bit of air space and what I would like to do is fill that with compacted fibre filler. The idea is to protect the bullet base and assist in sealing the bore against possible flame cutting of the bullet. I only have cotton ball but do not want to set the countryside on fire so I didn't do it. But, will a small amount of tightly packed cotton fibre burn? A lightly packed cotton fiber filler did not show any scorching with a slightly lower charge.

A small air space will not hurt and I don't believe you can harm a boolit base in any way. As long as a boolit fits and obturates (seals) the bore, there will be no flame cutting.
The problem came about with too soft a boolit that skidded the rifling and opened the land and groove marks at the boolit base wider then the rifling, opening gas channels. The gas check was developed to grab the rifling without skidding but shoot a faster powder and it will also skid and you will still lead the bore. By making the boolit harder, skidding is reduced and velocity can go higher before a gas check is needed. But even with a gas check and a hard boolit, you can make it skid with the wrong powder that reaches high pressure too fast. You want to start the boolit slower before a full pressure buildup.
Your paper patched boolits will still skid if slammed too hard before engaging the rifling and getting a good seal. No filler I know of that is safe will stop gas from squirting along the boolit if the engraved part is ruined. Dacron offers no resistance to gas and it is only used to keep the powder near the primer for consistent ignition.
Primers are a big problem. A magnum primer in too small a case will drive out the boolit before good powder burn happens and you will have a different case capacity for every shot depending on how far the boolit moved. It can even get dangerous if the boolit moves into the bore to act as an obstruction.
What you want is to keep the powder close to the primer, have a primer with a lot of HEAT and low pressure. Keep the boolit in the brass until a good burn comes on. You want a smooth transition to velocity, not a big thump.
Even in the revolver, the faster the powder, the harder the boolit must be to resist damage and effect a seal. Case tension must be tighter and the crimp tighter, that means harder lead. Soft lead will turn to putty with a fast powder, slump and expand at the forcing cone, squirt lead out of the cylinder gap, lead the bore badly and shoot for crap. You can actually go to a softer alloy with a slower powder and a higher velocity.
You need to figure powder choice, ignition, neck tension and alloy for what you want to do. Do not expect soft lead with a paper patch to prevent problems if you start the boolit too hard or do not hold the boolit back long enough.
A soft boolit seated in a case for proper neck tension will size down the boolit so it no longer seals the bore.
I know, I threw in a monkey wrench, but how else do I get revolver groups like I do? Much is applicable to the rifle.
Sometimes you need to sit at the bench and think instead of throwing loads together.
If you get flame cutting on the boolit, nothing will help but to get rid of it to start with.

most of my serious cast boolit work is done with rifles.
the ecxeptions are the 375,445 supermags and the 450 express mag revolvers.
what was written above should be copied down and saved for reference.
the one thing that wasn't mentioned was lubes.
viscosity and lubricity and amount used, play a role also.

Thanks you for taking the time and trouble. Much appreciated.

I listen very carefully to what you say - You are a Master at this game!

What you are saying makes complete sense to me. Although I experienced what seemed contradictory (but actually wasn't) with my 44 mag. The hard bullets flame cut badly while the softer ones filled the bore and were rather accurate. That was with a slower, single base pistol powder and not very high max pressure.

I have switched to a slower powder for my 303 Brit for the very reason you outline. I just am not sure I am achieving what I hope to. Range testing will show. Test tube firing is deceptive because the rate of pressure rise, flame temp and peak pressure is all different. All I am doing there is checking bullet fit! Even so, I have identified bullets that don't hold the rifling well and deform at the base due to swaging and slumping maybe.

The one thing I do like about cotton fill - even a small amount - is that it helps clean the bore!