Originally Posted By: Ted Schefelbein
Larry,
If there had been a big diference between the four varieties of J powder, it would have been marked on the flats of the gun which variety the gun was proofed with.

It wasn't. End of story.



Ted, it's not all about proof. Let's say someone finds reference to an old load used in X, Y, or Z old French gun. (Have you skipped over Drew's very useful references to standard loads in vintage American guns???) Now we're talking about SERVICE PRESSURE vs PROOF. And let's say that said load uses J1 (which Journee tells us is useful for waterfowl loads); or J2, which he tells us works well, generally, in hunting loads. (Interestingly, he also tells us that J is only useful for bullets in rifled weapons, velocities between 400-650 meters per second. So of no value at all for those of us looking for something that will work in a shotgun.) So if you stop at proof, you're bypassing everything that might have been known at the time about which loads would work well in a given shotgun, regardless of what powder was used to proof it.