While Bell didn't discover anything, what he did do was deal with two statements that were still pretty much chiseled in stone, at least on this side of the Atlantic, when he did his "finding out for myself" series. One was that you should never fire a longer hull in a shorter chamber. The other was that you should not shoot smokeless powder loads in guns with Damascus barrels.
Miller, I think you've been around this BB long enough to remember the "Damascus roulette" crowd. What Bell did in DGJ--a publication read by a lot of people who frequent this BB--was to cause people who hadn't read Burrard (or Thomas, who said the essentially the same thing Burrard did about long shells in short chambers, but maybe 20-25 years later) to recognize that neither the length of the hull in and of itself nor the composition of the barrel should be the focus of concern. Rather, our focus should be on the contents of the shell and the pressure it produces and the overall condition of the barrel in determining what loads are appropriate for use in our vintage shotguns.
Until Bell came along, there were still a lot of "Well yeah, but . . . " comments from the Damascus Roulette and the only use the proper length of shell crowd: "Yeah, but now we have plastic hulls and wads, and those guys were talking about paper hulls and fiber or cork wads. So what they said doesn't really apply." Bell tells us EXACTLY what he used and gives the results of various recipes using modern components. Essentially shot holes in all the "yeah but" concerns of the naysayers. The result being that there are a lot more people reloading for vintage guns, including those with Damascus barrels, using smokeless powder, 2 3/4" plastic hulls, and plastic wads.
While he certainly didn't invent the wheel, I think I'd give him credit for giving us the ballistic equivalent of radial tires.
