Apex,
There is an interesting thread on page 1 of the reloading forum about case seperation, maybe failure was the wrong term to use. I've seen my share of this with belted cases, most not to the extreme of injury. A belted mag is the last case I personally would cowboy up.
Thanks for the info on the Berger data, but the STW is a hunting gun of mine I shoot lighter bullets out of it.
As far as your friend getting 3400fps out of the 6.5wsm with rl-17, and having ruined cases after two firings is what I'm telling jwing not to do. Rl-17 is a fast powder for the short mags.
Remington doesn't even make a gun in a SAUM anymore, it's kept alive by target shooters and wildcatters. So performance is what people are after, yes they get pushed.
Jwing, sorry about hijacking your thread for the rumble! I'm kinda friends with burhead, was shooting with him on sunday so him and I are on the same page.
Where you located? A few of us bought all the MRP-2 from BHSS, sole distributer of Norma in US. Then we cleaned out Powder Valley, so finding a supply of it is going to be tough.
A friend of mine shoots a 6.5wsm with, 130gr Norma GT, fed 210m, 68gr of Mrp-2, he's pushing 3350 with it. Litz published the bullets bc at .574, getting close to the 140 berger, and is quite economical to shoot. The gun rocks! We've talked about switching his load to the 140, and N570, but the cost keeps him from doing so. He just bought my last 400 Norma bullets, that should just about do his barrel in.
One thing burhead didn't mention to you is, we all shoot moly coated bullets, which I'm a firm believer is bringing more velocity.
Oh, and getting 2 custom guns in one month is just not fair.
Try N 570, it is a dual based, high energy powder, the results will be there without pressure.
I'm gone, good luck,
Miles