i see toby has parted with savage or vise versa, and how about the photos of the savage he blew up witha factory load! and why did he wait to tell everybody

My friend, that was not a factory load. It was 5gr over with a 240gr bullet/sabot.

Probably wanted to take his time before informing everyone. Think about how best to approach this for everyone. Even though he is honest with his data and load, I think to be impartial and fair, he should state what the manual says. The way I read it, is to go with recommended loads, and might adjust 1 gra or 2.

so much for being the overbuilt safest gun on the market then! if that kind of charge 49 grains of 5744 does that to that gun, i mean if he was shooting 48 grains and had no pressure signs and went up 1 grain come on home safe is it then and was it an issue with the 3 hole vent liner? i wont be buying one anytime soon.and why wait to tell folks what happend! that in my book lack and credibilaty

iam also searching all the savage sites and am seeing that load as a mild one, including some 5744 48 grain loads using 300 bullets! humm .

Well, you ought to try it then. Have you ever reloaded Centerfires? You know what happens if you load 2gr past max in a 44mag with H110? Bad things can happen.

I didn't realize you could physically see pressure signs with the Savage. Now I understand how people could get the wrong impression about loading a savage and how it may be too dangerous for the public. I would have never dreamed that so many people would consider this mild considering what the manual says. I have reloaded for a long time, and can't remember but once or so that I intentionally deviated from Hodgdons or IMR's recommendations. But from the sounds of it, and other savage websites you were mentioning, too many people are not responsible enough to reload CF or handle the Savage smokeless. Too many people like to get together on the internet and take advise like the word of the almighty. Remember what your grandfather told you about believing all you hear or see.

Keep in mind that the rifle in question also had over 7,500 rounds shot through it. Maybe it had a defect in it from the factory. Maybe it's a design flaw. Maybe Toby was bitter at Savage for whatever reason and decided to blow the rifle intentionally. What I am saying is that all of the information given so far is suspect, except for the fact that a rifle blew. I am not interested in trusting Savage nor Toby until this gets ironed out a little more. Interestingly enough, I have a new in box Savage ML10-II waiting for me this weekend. Hmmm...

no i do reload, 308, 44 50ae and a bunch others, yes i do understand that but i see a lot of data that is printed on theses sites by a lot of quote trusted names! and since that rifle blew up while toby was still under good terms with savage i dont think he did it on purpose! and toby stated he saw no sigh of pressure problems, so ask him

I guess I am more interested in the WHY? and I really do not think it was the 1 extra grain of 5744. I really think there was more to it and I also think that may have been the reason for the delayed announcement - the investigation as to what really happened.

There are several different theories that we could apply but only those directly involved will really be able to provide some sort of direct answer.

I didn't read in the article that Toby was blaming Savage, I read that he was re-evaluating the information we now have about Savage and smokeless powder.

I don't know if we will ever know the "rest of the story"

The idea of loading smokeless in a muzzleloader is a bad idea. Lets face it, the majority of people out there are stupid. Most can't find their a$$ with both hands and a map! It only takes one or two grains of smokeless to go from completely safe to downright dangerous. You know that some jackass is going to load up their old powder measure for black with 90 grains of 4350 or whatever. I don't belive that you could see any signs of excessive pressure with a muzzleloader, esspecialy with such a minor deviation in charge weight. Your not going to see blown primers, or cracked cases, so how exactly did he hope to see pressure signs? Stick with the big uffy clouds that makes muzzleloading so much fun, and there will be no problems.