I think that Francis Sell may have had the last recent/modern book on using fiber wads. It was a 'transitional' bit of work with one foot in the plastiq, in a manner o' speaking. He did a lot of pattern work with the 3" 20's and assorted fiber, felt & paper wadding combinations seeking improved performance for waterfowl using lead shot.
The 'issues' if you want to call it that, with older load data is a total lack of any pressure data and possibly questionable velocity estimates. OTOH, hundreds of thousands of paper cases were reloaded using the recipes provided by makers of loaders & component suppliers like Alcan. MEC had fixed charge bars & they provided generic load data sheets that were often less than specific for use with their dif. bars. 'Paper' or 'plastic' was about as differential as it got for wads being used. Primer? Yes.
I know that the BP muzzle loaders valued hornet's nest as a good wadding, but have never seen reference to its being used in a shotgun. It always struck me as an interesting material for someone to do an article on.
The use of 'fillers' such as corn meal & flour was shown to create excessive pressure levels in some articles that were published later as pressure testing became more prevalent, so I would excercise caution before just replicating some older filler type reloads. Same issues were found using Kapoc in some reduced centre fire loads, excessive pressures. Probably much safer to go with data from folks like Ballistic Products that have recent data on their filler(s) and stick with their exact selection of components.
OTOH, I still load Ljutic Mono Wads, Alcan Blue Streaks and assorted card & fiber wads in Federal paper cases for the 12 and Remington Huntsman papers for the 16, though my remaining supply of those hulls is nearly extinguished.
You bring up a good subject that could bear more discussion & revival. Thanks!
