Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors OT----White powder

Had a bunch of old/corroded shotgun shells so decided to take out the shot for another project. About equal parts Federal/Winchester/CIL/Mondial(Hungarian). 95% of the Win. and Fed. had a white powder mixed in with the lead pellets. None in any other shell. Just looked like salt. Any ideas what it is? And NO,I'm not going to taste it. Rodney

I seem to recall something about fine ground plastic being used as a buffer to protect the shot while its going down the barrel. I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.

Lee

It's called Grex,granulated plastic.Keep's patterns tight,less deformation.Year's ago Tom Roster had good result's with regular flour.Hammered a few crow's with 'em myself.

Thanks,guys. I heated a little and it gave off a hot plastic smell.That's also probably why it was only in the better quality shells. Collectively,we know the answers to everything.

Grex was trademarked by Winchester for their particular polyethylene or polyurethane filler material. Federal used a different substance and called it poly something or other. Greg was briefly put on the market but was short lived. I used up my last bottle this summer finishing off the last of my stash of Win 571.

Roster's first article on using flour and later ground plastics was in late 1976 or early 1977 and called, "In Search of 100% Patterns." I still have that article somewhere and reread it when I find it. The big takeaway is adding buffer of any kind raises pressures and the amount of the rise varies on the material itself and not any added weight to the shot charge. That is why later load data is very specific with all components used and especially the filler material.

Too bad too much filler will raise pressures. I was just thinking put a lot of flour in the shell and you'd get a big puff of white when you fired the gun. I came up with that and I haven't even started on the New Year's cheer yet.

That is the Cream of Wheat method of cartridge forming. I've done it some myself.