Sad thing is Grouse, the idiots that abound in this world rule the manufacturers with liability suits. You have to look at things from the manufacturers point of view on this one. If they feel that there could POSSIBLY be a moron out there that would neglect to replace a vent liner before firing then they have to take that into account. To you and those of us who are accustomed to MLers and the possible dangers of NOT replacing such a small thing this may seem like a non issue. But to the lawyers of the manufacturers they look at it as a small feature that would be easily overlooked by a rookie causing damages. In today's world of lawsuits being looked at as a lotto game they have to err on the side of unreasonable to us.

I thought it was more along the lines of the savage patent deal than an injury issue.

Yes, me too; don't really know for sure.

As far as injury goes... a while ago i accidentally shot a rifle without a ventliner. That was a surprise. Doing so didn't injure me. The powder leaked into the action some. Shooting without a vent liner was dirtier. The primer does experience more pressure, and gets stuck. Since i was there, i shot the rifle four more times without, and recorded velocity, then five times with.

You're correct - Savage does hold the patent for the removable vent liner in a breech plug. So in this case while Knight, Lehigh, and almost everyone else has a concern about safety the reason for the brazing was concern of a law suit about crossing the lines of a patent.

The only reason I can think of that they went forward with the brazed vent liner is that the vent liner should/could outlast a plug with out a vent liner. The heat created by BH has shown that this is not the case. On the other hand I am shooting T7 and so far have been getting longer life from the vent liner than I might have gotten from a solid breech plug.

The original Lehigh breech plug was built and hardened from 17-4PH metal.

It is an extremely strong metal. But because of the necessity to make the vent liner non-removalable the metals of both the breech plug and the vent liner were changed so that the brazing process could/would work. The breech plug was changed to 416 Stainless. With this new combinations of metals the brazing process could be completed with a normal vacuum suction method.

None of this process would have been necessary if Savage was not the owner of the patent or if Knight could have received assurance from Savage that patent violations would not be filed.

Today if you were to go the Lehigh Bullets web site (not Lehigh Defense) the Savage Vent liners now being offered have returned to the type that Lehigh originally produced for the Savage and with the higher level of hardening applied.

At this point, and I have not asked, if Lehigh will ever be able to offer the original Lehigh bare breech plug.

All good excuses but the main reason was cost. The 17-4 was pretty expensive in comparison but well worth it in my opinion.