stronger bolt material for high pressure loads??

[cory]

Well, one good result of having a bunch of +P (58ksi) ammo around is that owners of short-throated Grendels would have had instant feed back that something was wrong with their rifle as a result of the cratered primers, streaks on the case head, generally abused brass, and lots of broken bolts. I guess that is really a bad thing!

I recall that there were a lot of broken bolts earlier in the history of the Grendel, and one of our members dug through the posts and determined that the vast majority of these incidents came from handloaders. Speaking from personal experience early in my reloading career, I was also one who wanted the most MV -- call it a misguided manhood thing. One of the probable contributors to broken bolts is that many of these guys were loading to levels where they routinely got classic high pressure indicators and then picked a go to load somewhere at that level, which is well above the 52,000 psi SAAMI ceiling. Bolt fatigue sets in a lot faster when higher stresses are put on it.

Point well taken, but I did say assuming the weapon was built properly. As we know those barrels were not.

I completely agree with the second paragraph. And I think we can agree that those were likely from 100+ HOT loads, likely 2 or 3 hundred plus.