"... what are the pressures than Weatherby loads to? Does anyone know?"
I'll tell you about three reports from my own side-line experience and let you draw your own conclusions.
1. Several years ago, I got a call from a fellow in Utah who wanted to know where his friend's lawyer should send the remains of his friend's Weatherby rifle for expert testimony to take to court. His friend, who did not handload at all, used only Weatherby ammunition (loaded by Norma). As he was zeroing his rifle before a hunting trip, the bolt came out, entered his face below his right eye, coursed down inside his neck, and broke his collar bone -- then stopped.
2. A year or two later, a friend of mine on a business visit to Norma called me from Sweden to tell me that the Norma people really liked my treatise on pressure in my book. In that call and another during that visit, he mentioned also that the folks at Norma were not comfortable with the specs that they had to load the Weatherby ammo to (specified by Weatherby). Norma thought the loads were too hot -- hot enough to make them nervous.
3. Still later, I got a couple of calls from an industry friend whose job it was to pressure-test, in his employer's lab, all the brands and calibers of factory ammo available in the U S. In his first call, he said that he had just a few more tests to go before he'd be done with the Weatherby ammo and would really be glad to be done with that brand. In a later call, he said he was greatly relieved to have finished with the Weatherby stuff. The last ones he'd tested were the .378 and the .460, so I assumed that he was glad that all their heavy recoil was behind him. I made some remark to that effect, and he said no, that the pressures recorded in the lab had been worrying him.
"What was the highest pressure you recorded? I asked.
"Seventy-five thousand" (pounds per square inch) he said.
"What was the lowest?" I asked, quite surprised by that figure.
"Seventy thousand."
Do these three reports seem, to you, to be related?
