Dennis,

First off, I hope you're doing well...didn't mean to annoy you there. :-)

I admit, I was off on the price of .338 RCM factory stuff. I was thinking Nosler Custom kind of prices ($50-$60/20) rather than the more reasonable Hornady pricing ($38.99/20 at MidwayUSA). Fine if you want to shoot the 225 gr SST at any rate. Handloading is obviously still a lot cheaper, and the difference between the RCM and WSM is all of (at most) ten grains of powder per round.

As to the "step up" question, it's pretty much the same exact issue as "stepping up" from the .338-06 to the .338 Win Mag. Is there anything "wrong" with a .338-06 in a short action? Heck no, nor did I imply that there was. But having been on the other side of the argument in a .338-06 thread, I can tell you that a lot of folks feel the .338 WM is the way to go. The .338 WSM is within spitting distance of the .338 WM with 210 or 225 gr bullets. No, I don't have one, but it's not exactly rocket science to figure out since the .325 WSM isn't too far from a .338. The .325 WSM launches a 220 gr bullet at 2840 ft/s from a 24" barrel. The .338 WSM should hit right around the same number with a 225 (slightly larger bore makes for a bit more efficiency). That's (as 358WSM alluded) about 200 FPS above any published load I found for the .338 RCM out of a 24" tube (I looked at Hodgdon and Ramshot data). Both rounds might be a bit slower with the TTSX, since it's a long bullet and takes up a bit of powder volume. No flies on the 210 gr TTSX either though. Dober has a .338 WSM, perhaps he can chime in with some of his chrono data.

BTW, you're shooting one of the 20" barrel models, right? How close are you coming to factory numbers with your handloads? From what I've seen Hornady is using powder in the factory loads that's not available for handloaders...

At any rate, the argument boils down to a ".338-06 versus .338 Win Mag" argument, except in a short action rifle. As was pointed out to me on the other thread, you can load the larger round down to the smaller round levels, but not vice-versa.

As I mentioned in my first post, my next project will be a .338-06. It should feed slickly, is cheap to reload, and I already have a donor. Works for me!