A question:

Is anyone aware of any current .45-70 that is warranted by the MAKER for anything over 28,000?

It is a lot easier for a maker to state the gun good for factory Trapdoor levels than to go further since most factory loads are loaded to this level. This makes total sense from a product liability standpoint since the maker cannot possibly know what pressures somebody's handload is going to generate.

How do any of us truly know what pressures many of our .45-70 handloads DO generate without having them tested on pressure equipment?

Remington isn't that stupid to state the gun good for some service pressure at which no factory loads are available.

As I stated in an earlier post, I would not buy a .45-70 Baikal second hand, just like I have always steered clear of S&W 29-2's and earlier .44 Mags unless I can fully inspect them before buying. Too much experimentation with unknown heavy loads.

Having said that, I can imagine some might be eager to experiment with stouter-than-Trapdoor loads in the Baikal. I just might myself if I owned one of the guns as I like to monkey with the .45-70.

And thus the reason I wouldn't buy one 2nd Hand.

And before somebody pitches a rock at Brianj for saying so, I agree 100% with his assessment of the "softball", Trapdoor-level, factory loads and N. American game. A 300 at 1800 and a 405 at 1200 will kill a lot of stuff, and has.