tw - good thinking and nicely written. Hope you will engage in some discussion of some of your points.
"Shot hardness does matter in smaller sizes, and that is essentially irrefutable." I have often seen hardness and sphericity cited as critical to pattern "goodness." Do we really know this?
I'm not keen on accepting tighter (higher pellet count in a given circle at a given distance) as "better." This, IMO, is one of the prime reasons for statistical analysis. Until someone shows me something different, I'm going to believe patterns are basically Rayleigh distributions (never, never, "even" ala pegboard). I'm also going to believe that the "patchiness" (for lack of a better word) is more important than tightness; we can tighten it up with choke (within the limits of full choke).
Sooooo, has anyone ever put some small shot between two steel plates and fetched the top plate a healthy smack with a largish hammer - sufficient to deform all/most of the shot, then loaded and patterned said deformed shot in comparison to undeformed shot? That experiment is in my retirement folio - and it will be done subject to Dr. Jones's program. But, I'd love to hear results for someone else.
Can I once again ask that people consider recording patterning experiments with a digital camera? It allows sharing of visual images at a minimum!!
tw, I surely don't intend to be picking on you. I just hope we can get this discussion going sufficient to flush out what we really know about patterning. "Flush" may the appropriate word, too.
