Grex Filler

[Tonyd]

I looked under search function and did not find much. Have any of you tried the plastic GREX filler used as buffer in shotshell loaders as a filler/bore sealer between ball and powder? I used it a lot in metallic cartridge reloading for cast bullets to protct bases with sometimes excellent results and few times in ML Rifle loads with somewhat inconclusive results. NEVER had any problem with it "melting" or leaving residue in bbls. Know is not traditional but neither are card/fiber wads.

thanks

Tony in Seattle

 

[arquebus]

Never used Grex, but do use Malt O Meal cereal in my Rifle-Muskets between powder & Minie. Cuts down fouling, so I can shoot at least 15 shots without wiping the bore & last shot loads as easy as the 2nd. Also use it as a filler in my C&B revolver.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Super Grex is a Winchester product that is no longer available for sale to reloaders. The only thing on the market that is close to it, is called Puf Lon, and you can get it from Ballistic Products, and probably other suppliers whose links are found above. A more traditional filler would be Cream of Wheat, or Corn Meal. Also hornet's nest, dry leaves, tobacco leaves, crushed, rawhide- squirrel, rabbit, woodchuck, raccoon, oppossum, and other small game animal hides can make good patching material, or be used as filler. Even the hair scraped off the hides can be used as a filler. Card wads were certainly used in the 19th century as over powder wads.

 

[ffffg]

all fillers wether used to stop blowby or in shot to get better patterns raises pressures.. this is not a problem with measured amounts and loads worked up properly.. a filler can also be used to get the ball to seat over the errosian area in a barrel caused by spit patches, or bulge or other defect... but the more filler the more pressure.. ..dave

 

[paulvallandigham]

Dave: Light weight fillers, Like super grex, or Puf Lon, and even corn meal do increase the pressures in the chambers, but simply because they seal the gases that otherwise blow by many patches, and soft wads. Because pressures are relatively low in most BP calibers, and the powder burns progressively, down the length of the octagon barrel, spreading out the force of that pressure, it is not a safety concern in a mechanically sound firearm. The light weight of the fillers is what makes them so useful when compared even to card wads, and lubed cushion wads. A lubed cushion wad, for instance, in a smoothbore shotgun, even being used behind a PRB is quite different that using such a cushion wad behind a PRB in a Rifle! At some of the maximum pressures that have been reported here for some of the substitute powders, I would hesitate to use heavy fillers in shotguns loaded with some of these modern wonders without doing extensive testing and working up a load from a reduced load baseline, if I was using a traditional ML firearm. Maybe those in-#$@$% things we don't talk about here can take the aded pressures, but I don't want to be that close to a vent, or nipple behind those kind of pressures.