That is the article I was referring to.
As for Hornady, in cross referencing loads for Bi and Pb using the same powder (longshot), Win AA, W 209, and wad WAA12R, you will find that when the shot and powder weights are the same, pressure and velocity are effectively the same - within a few percentage points.. I
f you load using volumetric measures and simply substitute Bi for Pb, using the same measure will result in a 13-14% reduction in the weigh of the shot column and the pressures drop substantially. In other words, substituting Bi for Pb by weight seems quite reasonable given the Hornady data and substituting Bi for Pb by volume (as most of us do with our reloaders), appears to be VERY safe.
I find no Hornady loads for using buffers, albeit, I'm haven't dug real far. I don't want higher pressures than what I find for unbuffered loads, and I am not going to shoot waterfowl at 60+ yards.
Thank you, I was just going to post loads from Hodgdon using cheddite hulls, primers, and RP wads to illustrate this!!
Back in the early days of steel shot there was no loading data, thanks to people like Tom Roster, and companies like MEC that all changed, I still have some of those old MEC 10 ga wads, but I think because steel acts so much differently than lead, or other heavy metals that act like lead, BI, gold, and yes Tungsten matrix people got scared of reloading, which is a good thing, you CANNOT sub lead loads for steel.
I mentioned it before (in another post) Steel shot when loaded in a confined space and shot at velocity acts like a solid, it does not like being confined, it does not like sudden velocity changes, and it does not like being choked, but you take other materials listed above, when put under the same conditions as those listed for steel they act like a fluid, they will flow with the velocity, they don't mind the sudden acceleration, and they react well to being choked because they "flow".
TM
