I would have liked to be the fly on the wall at the meeting between engineering, sales and corporate when they decided to extend production to 60,000 psi cartridges.
Didn't they build their 30-06 prototypes before the 243/308/358? And I believe the early catalogs list their rifles as being built with steel that will handle 100 psi. I'm sure they did a lot of testing, but a 30% increase in cartridge pressure after 60 years of production and people wildcatting with them probably gave them a pretty good idea it would hold up just fine.
JeffG, are you sure that 300 Savage takedown was loaded really hot? Or did it maybe have a horse roll on it or get driven over by a car? I've seen both of those of happen, I've never seen a receiver broken by hot loads. I've even seen a couple 99's with split barrels.
