"Staying in todays recommended pressure limits" ? Avoids accidents and turning firearms into scrap metal and sources of spare parts.
Accidents are accidents, and staying within current SAAMI pressure specs doesn't affect accidents happening. While staying within current SAAMI specs does avoid turning guns into scrap, it also avoids the full potential of your firearm.
I have exceeded the new SAAMI pressure limits with very good accuracy in the past [70's-80's] but, was in the standards for that time. I was just trying to keep with the newer pressures limits and get the same type of performance.
And you didn't turn your gun into scrap??? Did the Pressure Police come and ticket you for loading ammo above current SAAMI specs???...The dragons did not eat you???....
Amazing!
(yes, that is deliberate sarcasm)
I've read a lot of people on the web who give me the impression that they believe exceeding SAAMI pressure specs by even a tiny amount instantly brings doom and disaster. I don't believe this to be true.
All our guns survive proof firing without turning into grenades or even breaking or cracking. Proof loads are considerably higher pressure than SAAMI working load limits.
Its not a perfect analogy, but in some ways, SAAMI pressure limits are like the yellow speed limit signs on curves. They give you speed limit for taking that curve that everything on the road can do safely. Yellow signs are a warning, a suggested safe speed. Not the law. The suggested limit might be 25, and in certain vehicles, you definitely don't want to go faster than that on that curve. But with other vehicles, the actual safety boundary is different. The sign says 25, but my truck, with me driving, can stay on the road, and in my lane at 35. In my car, I can do it at 50. With a high end sports car, I might be able to do it at 80, or I might not, that's something I'd have to work up to, carefully. Kind of like max load development.
No, you shouldn't exceed SAAMI specs, if you are a manufacturer, because you are making a product that has to be safe for "everything on the road".
Handloaders are loading for themselves. Their individual results are only for themselves. They can push the envelope, and the only risk is to themselves. Some do go too far.
People pushing the "established limits" are why we have a .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, & .454 Casull.
Stay within SAAMI pressure limits and be safe!!! it's a smart thing to do. (or so we're told)
OR don't, and all the risk on your head be it.
I grew up reloading in an era where the pressure numbers were just abstract data for the home reloader. What mattered to us wasn't the number of psi, cup, lup, attached to a certain load, what mattered was how the load performed in OUR gun. Pressure signs were our standard. Primer appearance, case head expansion, sticky extraction, etc. Those were what mattered, not the "book number" of psi.
Now, common wisdom today is that pressure signs are "unreliable" indicators of pressure. They are, and they aren't. They aren't reliable indicators of a specific pressure NUMBER, as too many factors are involved.
But they are reliable indicators that pressure has reached an undesirable level in your gun with those load components.
And that undesirable pressure level may be above or BELOW SAAMI specs, depending on the factors in your gun with your ammo components and loading. Below isn't common but it can happen.
Under the right conditions someone might run off that 25mph curve at 20. Someone else rides it like they were on rails at 50. It all depends on a host of factors unique to each individual vehicle and driver.
ALL handloading data is guidelines, not immutable natural laws. Every one of us is using a different gun, and different components, put together in different ways. Similar results are common, but any of us can be at either end of the bell curve, so that's why we say start low and work up CAREFULLY!
Also, don't get hung up on a specific velocity reading. Individual guns DO vary. Just because someone else's gun got XXXXfps with load A doesn't mean yours will. It might, but it also might be higher, or lower. I've seen 100fps difference between 3 different 6" .357s, shooting the same ammo. That much difference isn't common, but its not a freak occurrence, either.