ORIGINAL: TurfBoy
My understading of it is not the pressure in the reciever, but in the chamber. If you use the same size barrel blank and put a short, fat chamber in it, you make the chamber wall thickness much thinner. i.e. less steel.
Also, weren't the short magnums made to duplicate the long action magnums performance in a cartridge that fits into a short action bolt gun? If you get the same performance out of a 300 Mag as a 300 wsm, what is the difference? In an encore, you don't have to worry about the action length. Am I wrong? Please let me know if I am.
As for the barrel thickness, my customEncore barrel is a full bull and has MUCH more steel than my factory Blaserstandard weight300 WSM barrel. I don't really buy into the pressure/barrel wall thickness problems with WSMs. I have shot hundreds of rounds of factoryWinchester Supreme ammo without a hiccup. Now if you are an experimentalreloader and like them "hot"... These kinds of warningsare usually to protectus from ourselves.
As for the differences between 300 WM and 300 WSM, ballistically, they arepretty much the same, but I have hadboth and can definitely tell a difference in recoil. I used to have a Ruger #1 in 300 WM (I got rid of it because of recoil)and currently have the Blaser and Encore in 300 WSM, and the WSM does recoil less in my guns (my WSMs actually recoil less the my Ruger 270). That is enough for me to give the WSM the nod.