Mike,
I've never seen a steel saddle either, and have probably been using Weaver rings for close to 50 years now.
Which is probably why I can usually get the reticle square to the action on the first try. Having used them so much, I have a good idea of about how much "tilt" is necessary before tightening the top screws. Maybe 5% of the time I have to try twice.
One reason I use 'em so much is testing various rifles and scopes. Over the years I've built up quite a collection of Weaver bases, so can generally find some to fit almost any rifle. But some of my personal rifles also have Weaver rings, partly because (as RinB noted) they're very practical detachable mounts. This is handy both for traveling (where a backup scope in Weaver rings has come in handy more than once) or when testing a scope on one of my rifles. I can take the rifle's regular scope off, mount the test scope, then put the regular scope back on after the test, with no loss of zero.
On "nice" rifles where the Weavers might look too ugly, I tend to use Talley detachables for the same reasons. But Weavers outnumber the Talleys by about 2-1.
