Ross Seyfried was writing of using Damascus & lauding the use of 7625 powder for low pressure loads at least as far back as the mid to late 1970's. This was I believe much earlier than any of Bell's work. I was already loading & shooting smokeless powder in damascus guns even prior to this in loads in the 7K-8k pressure range, so acquired a small lot of 7625 to try. My first impressions were very favorable but then I carried some loads of it Duck hunting which were taken directly from the still then DuPont handloaders guide in a 7K psi range. They completely let me down in lower 20° temps, so I went back to Green Dot & never looked back.
Bell brought several things to the attention of his readers, BUT, in all honesty I can't think of 1 single thing he actually Discovered, which was not already available to those who had sought it out. Look at the catalogs of makers such as Smith, Baker, Lefever, Parker etc, they all warrented their damascus gunns for use with smokeless loads & these loads weren't the "Super-Low" pressure ones we use today. Of course the guns were new then. Pressure curves have been around showing the similarites between black & smokeless pressures since at least the early 1920s etc, etc.
