JDW I understand your thinking but as Jim and 2 Piper pointed out there are differences in powders. Peak pressures are what is stated in reloading data. The peak, which only lasts for very brief portion of the burn time, does not perform the most work to accelerate the load. It is the total sustained pressure which brings the load up to velocity. If you have a pressure vs time curve for a load from ignition to barrel clearance, the area under the curve represents the work performed. Peak pressures are just a brief spike early in the burn. So a load with a low peak but a longer sustained pressure can easily out perform a fast powder. A real example is that black powder loads which seldom get past 6000 psi peak in shotguns can duplicate smokeless powder load performance with peaks in the 11,500 psi range. Recoil is calculated off the velocity and weight of the material ejected from the barrel(shot, wad, powder residue, gases). Drop the weight and velocity greatly reduces recoil.
