I haven't tried the shot shell buffers. Any experimenting with them will have to wait 2 to 5 years, until we return from South Africa.

Kapok seems to work just fine. I have been weighing the Kapok and checking across the chronograph and it makes a difference. I have been increasing the weight a little at a time.

I think it has more to do with the holding of the powder rigidly in place during firing and some mild effects of compression.

Same with weighing BP. I set my measure to hold one gr. less than the load I want. I dump the measure on the scale pan and trickle to weight. I have noticed two things. There is a lot of weight variation from one charge to the next when using just a volume measure. Extreme spread and SD are smaller with weighed charges. Weighing and trickling gives me better results.

The other thing I found was that 85 grs by volume of FG Goex didn't weigh the same as 85 grs by volume of Swiss Fg. All my notes went into packing boxes to day So I can't tell you which was heavier.

The old rule with 577.450 was to fill the case to the bottom of the neck as per the drawings in the LoC and that was supposed to be 85 grs. Couple of problems with that theory. I had to eyeball down the neck to see if I was at the bottom of the neck. When I checked a block of loads to see how close I was, the loads varied as much as 5 grs.

As far as filling the case goes, solid head brass will take 130 grains and ballon head brass will hold upwards of 150 grs.

The solid head brass will hold up to that load. My shoulder won't. The Balloon head brass bugles bad enough at 85 grs. At 115 grains the balloon head cases will bulge badly. I shudder to think what will happen to it at 150 grains.