Remember that you have a lot more inertia, and therefore a greater pressure build up, as well as more complete burning, when you are shooting a bullet out of a cartridge casing, compared to the lower inertia for a PRB. I have no doubt that Elephant powder works very well shot in Black Powder cartridges. Also, its the practice of those shooters to compact the powder using drop tubes, and that also helps to make for more complete burning.
Your experience shooting the .45-70 cartridge using the stuff is just as valid as Roundball's experience trying the stuff in his MLers, because he is shooting a lighter, PRB with the stuff. . I think Elephant gets a " bad " reputation among MLers because it does not burn as cleanly as do Goex or Swiss powders, when we shoot PRBs.
We know Swiss powder use a slighly different formula, and that the granules are slight smaller in size compared to American sizing. I don't know enough about Elephant powder to say anything about its granule sizing, or its chemical make up.
I do know that when Goex FFg is screened, you can get lots of FFFg and FFFFg powder out of a pound of the stuff, from older lots, but that the newer lots seem to be screened at the factory now to be more uniform.
The Goex Cartrige powder, when screened, seems to be well screen FFFg powder to me, both physically,I granule size) and on the chronograph. Considering the difference in price, it would be cheaper for users to simply buy the cheaper FFFg powder, some screen wire, and screen their own powder.
I like how clean Swiss FFFg powder burns in a percusison gun. I have not yet tried any Swiss 1 1/2 powder in my flintlocks, which are comparable to Goex FFg. Goex FFg powder in a large bore gun, shooting even a heavy PRB, such as my 20 gauge fowler, seems to burn very clean, and completely, when I use an OP wad over the powder.
