As Chuck mentions, peak acceleration is correlated with peak pressure. The peak occurs in the chamber, and overcomes the payload inertia 'right smartly'.
It's not just accelerating, it's accelerating to beat hell.
Butler's data from Winchester shows a 3 dram one ounce load attains 1,000 FPS after 7" of payload movement. 7" !
It's been common wisdom for some time that all that force can't help but mash the poor pellets out of round traversing the chamber cone and being shoved into a narrower tube, so over boring has become almost universal to 'improve patterns'.
Then Winston comes along and says it makes no difference. With test data and pronouncements from the oracle of Jones, he claims it's all smoke and mirrors and does nothing at all.
Yet, in a another of his articles in Drew's reference he extols the virtues of 'extra hard' shot as being an essential contributor to throwing winning trap patterns.
Anyone care to reconcile those two conclusions?
This seems to point to acceleration deformation as being the primary, indeed the only, cause of out of round pellets.
If so, would not a more gentle acceleration such as provided by a slower powder result in tighter patterns?
Were this true, Unique should outshoot Red Dot every time.
