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Shooting next to an old boy this morning. I was using my lever action in 45lc and him with his 357/38.

I noticed that excess 'crap' was leaving his muzzle every time he took a shot so commented on it. He explained that it was the 'filler'. He was reloading his own rounds but after putting in his powder, was filling the remainder of the case with an inert filler. Thereby packing in the space between powder and bottom of the bullet.

Now i've heard of fillers being used to fire-form one case into another, e.g.: a .270 case into a 30-06. But actually filling the void in rounds intended to be shot? Surely this will increase the pressures - potentially dangerously?

Anyway he was 100% sure that he was right and i'd never heard of it before so i smiled, nodded and moved a ways from him before continuing shooting.

So, an accepted practice or not? Have i been doing something wrong by leaving all that void in my 45lc rounds all these years?

SOME folk do it - never heard of it for 357 though!

For my 45 Colt I have in the past used card discs pushed down over the powder to keep it in place on the base of the case...though now using TinStar & the latest rounds seem much improved without needing to add over-powder cards

I dont shoot pistols but do use fillers in my rifle

He may have been downloading (to worryingly low) amounts of powder to save money.

Have you seen what happens to a gun after someone puts in too little powder?

That said, a lot of black powder shooters use semolina as a filler, me, I just fill the cylinder and ram the ball on top.

It ain't no fun if it don't go BANG!


:shakeshout:

Scotsgun wrote:Shooting next to an old boy this morning. I was using my lever action in 45lc and him with his 357/38.

I noticed that excess 'crap' was leaving his muzzle every time he took a shot so commented on it. He explained that it was the 'filler'. He was reloading his own rounds but after putting in his powder, was filling the remainder of the case with an inert filler. Thereby packing in the space between powder and bottom of the bullet.

Now i've heard of fillers being used to fire-form one case into another, e.g.: a .270 case into a 30-06. But actually filling the void in rounds intended to be shot? Surely this will increase the pressures - potentially dangerously?

Anyway he was 100% sure that he was right and i'd never heard of it before so i smiled, nodded and moved a ways from him before continuing shooting.

So, an accepted practice or not? Have i been doing something wrong by leaving all that void in my 45lc rounds all these years?

No don't do it, with my 9mm Largo or my 357. With titegroup no need to do it with either 223 or 308 subsonics as well (published loads from Hodgdon.)

Typically, I can't find the article, but I remember reading that the use of fillers is now regarded as a definite no-no!

My thought is if you're using the right powder, from recognised data, you shouldn't need fillers.

better methods for low vel pistol use trailboss or tinstar its what they were designed for

greenshoots

Cheers folks. I'll continue to just use the normal 9grs of powder and leave the rest to void.

I only use a filler with my muzzleloader,but never with the 357 rifle.

I use 5.4 of Titegroup in my .44 mag and it looks lost sitting at the bottom of the case!, I also tried it in the .308 for subsonics but even at 8gr it was giving over 1090fps and too noisy. Switched to 10gr of TrailBoss and it nicely fills the case and with the mod fitted was so quiet you could here the bipod springs resonate!.

Hi, where I shoot we are limited to 475 ft/lbs energy. To keep within range orders I load my 45 lc with titegroup it looks silly in the bottom of the case but I've never had a problem. With a 250 grn bullet this is a max 925 ft/sec, so I keep well below this. With a stiff load I can really make the the sand backstop jump but thats on a 100 yd open range. To my knowledge the only time to use a filler is with black powder in a pistol. The idea being a gentle load and the filler to keep the ball or bullet at the end of the cylinder. I've read if there's a gap between black powder and the ball, it could cause ring bulges.