Funny you mentioned that about the 45/70. Just saw this in the latest American Rifleman:
....and that's with an 18.5" bbl. We're beating that using a 50gr heavier bullet and 2.5" less bbl. And the icing on the cake is that the .450 groups better. Man, I love this cartridge!
Hoot-- I put the mic on the 350's. They are all at .914 +/-.001 I'd really be interested in what QL has to say. If you don't mind, could you see what it has to say about the 325gr FTXs? They're averaging about 1.10 +/-.005. (The flex tip makes consistent measurements difficult, and it appears that some of the tips may get deformed by the swaging process)
Wildcatter: You touched on a subject I was curious about. With these heavy crimps, how often should I be annealing? Every time? Every other? I don't care if it's every single time, if it helps. It really doesn't add much more time in the grand scheme of things. Oh, and I may have misled you guys: The virgin brass was being used with the 300 XTPs, not the 350's. For the 350's I was using 7X fired brass that was annealed prior to loading.
I'm definitely going to be marking my case bases. That's a good tip for finding pressure signs. As for 2100fps....we'll see if I try to go that high. I like pushing the boundaries, but I know the limits of my skill set. Perhaps I'll try it, but it'll be once I feel that I've learned enough to really push the limit. For now, I'm going to play it on the (slightly) more conservative side.
Out in my neck 'O the woods, I'll be using the 350's on Roosevelt Elk, so 4-5" at 300 yds is more than enough to hit the vitals!!!