Your powder lot, your brass, and your chamber are NOT the same as those used for the "book". Never is, never was. Book loads are only a rough guideline and YMMV. The only measure of real safety is the "performance" of load in YOUR rifle. Performance means pressure signs like case head expansion, velocity, primer flattening or worse.
In 45 years of reloading, I've blown primers with a book starting load (it was a Custom 240 Weatherby without the factory freebored chamber). And I ran a load a 7 full grains over "book" max (and still didn't get to Max book velocity, but ran out of case capacity to load more. Factory Sako 9.3x62 rifle).
Every load I ever made for my rifles was always test to visible MAX pressure, while watching the chrono of course. Which means I sometimes when over "book" MAX, and sometimes I never reached "book" Max (load or velocity), without bad pressure signs with a particular load that made me stop right there, right now. I've also only had one round ever that had to be hammered out of a chamber, after smoke came flooding out of the action, and that was with a factory Federal 35 Whelen. Bad lot of ammo, and gun and ammo were replaced by Federal.
In any event I never stopped adding powder to a case just because some book said "beyond here be dragons". The totality of the load has to be taken into account. Velocity, accuracy, case life, barrel life, muzzle blast, muzzle flash, et al are all factors that a serious reloader takes into account. That extra 50 FPS is a poor goal to be chasing.
Of course I didn't start reloading that way. I was very cautious. In the 1970's there were no chronographs you could buy( and there were none that were affordable until the 1990's). In the 1980's I was heavily into wildcats. Wildcats had little to no reloading data. No min's no max's but boy was that fun.
Some of my cats were:
30-338
250 Savage Imp.
7x57 Improved
263 Spence (6.5x57 wildcat)
6.5-06
350 G&H Magnum
.416 Taylor
458 Lott
And of course there were a bunch of factory rounds with scarce load data back when i first had them, like:
7x64
9.3x62
7mm Dakota
404 Dakota
Be safe and have fun
And of course IMHO and YMMV
In 45 years of reloading, I've blown primers with a book starting load (it was a Custom 240 Weatherby without the factory freebored chamber). And I ran a load a 7 full grains over "book" max (and still didn't get to Max book velocity, but ran out of case capacity to load more. Factory Sako 9.3x62 rifle).
Every load I ever made for my rifles was always test to visible MAX pressure, while watching the chrono of course. Which means I sometimes when over "book" MAX, and sometimes I never reached "book" Max (load or velocity), without bad pressure signs with a particular load that made me stop right there, right now. I've also only had one round ever that had to be hammered out of a chamber, after smoke came flooding out of the action, and that was with a factory Federal 35 Whelen. Bad lot of ammo, and gun and ammo were replaced by Federal.
In any event I never stopped adding powder to a case just because some book said "beyond here be dragons". The totality of the load has to be taken into account. Velocity, accuracy, case life, barrel life, muzzle blast, muzzle flash, et al are all factors that a serious reloader takes into account. That extra 50 FPS is a poor goal to be chasing.
Of course I didn't start reloading that way. I was very cautious. In the 1970's there were no chronographs you could buy( and there were none that were affordable until the 1990's). In the 1980's I was heavily into wildcats. Wildcats had little to no reloading data. No min's no max's but boy was that fun.
Some of my cats were:
30-338
250 Savage Imp.
7x57 Improved
263 Spence (6.5x57 wildcat)
6.5-06
350 G&H Magnum
.416 Taylor
458 Lott
And of course there were a bunch of factory rounds with scarce load data back when i first had them, like:
7x64
9.3x62
7mm Dakota
404 Dakota
Be safe and have fun
And of course IMHO and YMMV