Originally Posted by
uscra112
Lil'Gun was designed for the .410 shotgun, but it works very well in smaller rifle cartridges, especially the Hornet and .22 Lovell. I burned quite a bit of it in a .357 Max some years ago. It has a "fat tail" to the pressure/time curve, so it isn't so good in short barrels, but it will give you higher MV for a given peak pressure than the old standbys. In a gas-operated semi-auto this may not be good, because port pressures will be higher, and revolver guys complain about it gas-cutting the top strap.
Judging pressure by primer appearance is very imprecise. Time was that it was all the amateur wildcatters had, but now we can get chronographs for a few hundred bucks instead of a few thousand, and we should use them.
Where published data is sparse or non-existent I've been using Quickload software for almost ten years now. Look into it.