I got in touch with the guy today and talked with him for over 30 minutes. He definitely wants me to be safe and enjoy the rifle for years, but he told me that the max loads are always very conservative, because they have to account for old rifles, bad steel and lawsuits.
The United States does not have the proof testing requirements that Europe has and so ammunition manufacturer's do have to load considering that there are a bunch of antiques around. Of the European Proof laws I have read, not only do new firearms under proof testing, every time an old one is sold, rebarreled, or significantly modified in some structure way, the things get proof tested. Proof testing is more than sticking in a 30% over load, the proof test house inspects the firearm for wear and function. The pre 1968 German proof test laws, if the firearm failed one particular, it was destroyed. That upset owners when something like a safety failure lead to their favorite boom stick being cut into pieces! The law was changed so the offending item was removed. But the owner could not sell it until it passed proof.
These laws were put into place for two specific reasons. The first is obvious. They want to get the relics out of circulation. I believe there was a secondary reason:increase sales of new firearms. An owner of an old boom stick has the risk of the firearm and his fee going away after proof test. Loss aversion is real, and that would make owner ship and transfer of old relics less palatable over time. I mean, how do you know that you can sell the rifle?, it might fail the next inspection.
Let me take the example of old Mauser rifles. Through WW1 the service charge for 7mm and 8mm rifles was 43,000 psia, and they broke, when new. We do know from historical records lugs cracked on new M98 service rifles.
Rifle & Carbine 98: M98 Firearms of the German Army from 1898 to 1918 Dieter writes that the bolt lugs broke on 1:1000 of GEW98 service rifles used by the Bavarian Army Corp! This was when the cartridge pressure was 43,000 psia.
US ammunition companies have to take this into account when reloading 7mm or 8mm Mauser cartridges. Very few individuals know enough not to stuff high pressure ammunition into their relic military rifle.
Modern cartridges and rifles are made out of modern alloys. Anyone claiming that a factory 300 Win Mag is underloaded because of all the antique rifles around is delusional. The 300 Win Mag is a post WW2 creation and as a class, I have no issues with post WW2 steels made in first world countries. Communistic block is something else.
He told me that he made that load mostly for 1,000 yard matches, because the bullet must stay supersonic beyond the target. He said he considers the load to be a "warm load" not hot. He said it is a common load for long range shooters with 215 Bergers at that distance. He said 2,800 isn't really pushing the envelope. He told me that I could go to 60 grains and work from there, since I mostly will be shooting 100 and 200 yard matches at my local club. But will that cause issues, since I have to keep the same COAL, which gives me 0.015 jump to the rifling, and the case having so much empty space?
Clay Spencer build rifles on modern actions so that is good. What you do know is that the original owner ran his loads hot, probably up to the point that he was just under sticking extraction and blown case heads. We also know, he does not have pressure equipment. He does not know the pressures of his cartridges and because the rifle did not blow up in front of his face, he feels the load is safe. It is safe in the same fashion as the guy who falls out of the airplane without a parachute. He is perfectly safe till he hits the ground. It is hard to argue with characters like this as they operate in ignorance, and until such time as their head hits the pavement, they won't admit standing on the seat of the motorcycle is dangerous. What he does not know about the pressures of his cartridge, the number of hot rounds till lug cracking, is more than what he actually knows.
Even if the bullet is seated way out into the throat, creating more volume than usual, if the velocities are higher than book, then the pressures are higher than book. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
But, if you want to compete with the thing, crank the loads up, such as the original owner, and occasionally measure the headspace to see if it is growing, and examine the lugs for signs of cracking. And if the rifle does not blow up before you see something like this,
than lucky you.
I do know from a shooter who had a cracked lug, what happens afterward is very dependent on good gas venting and luck. One of the Range Masters at CMP Talladega had a lug crack on a 2016 mfgr Rem M700 action in 260 Win. When the cracked lug was sectioned, "pits" were found in the metal. I suspect those pits were bubbles, the steel was defective. The rifle had 4000 rounds through it and then one lug cracked and the case head blew. The bolt could only be removed after the barrel was removed from the action. Even though the steel was defective, Remington walked away since the rifle had custom work. Due to the design of the M700 the shooter's face remained intact, and so did the rest of his body. Mike Walker designed a very safe rifle in this regard. I know the bolt was toast, and probably the receiver was suspect afterwards. But, given other action designs, other circumstances, catastrophic failures of fire arms have caused serious injuries.
And the Range Master said he was not buying another Remington rifle. And I don't blame him. What the incident shows is the outsourcing of Quality Control and Inspection at source and poor sub contractor over sight. The steel supplier had to know the materials were substandard if not defective, and shipped it anyway, because the buyer had no way of knowing better!
