Well I’ll give my thoughts but they are obviously just my opinions.

The steels provided they had no fault then and haven’t been abused since then are still fine and will give fine service. However perhaps newer steels will let new cartridges to develop to take advantage of the new strength.

The design is as you pointed been refined for 100 years. Suddenly it seems we have those that want to stop the design where it was in the past. I mean there always needs to be some refinement. Otherwise we would all still be using matchlocks, because after all they were refined for centuries. Why spend the time to develop wheel locks, snaphaunce, miquelet etc? The art of gunmaking currently isn’t and never has been stable thing. There are always advances being made. Sometimes they don’t always work. Sometimes they shouldn’t work but do. That’s what makes guns great. If we all like the exact same thing it would really stink because everything would look the same.

The British make fine rifles. However if they simply were fine and didn’t continue to tinker with the basic German actions then many a fine weapon would never have been created. I think a lot of this is how people of a society tend to view their guns. Germans of the last century are very utilitarian. Thus there guns are usually heavy but very very strong. They are a tool that is meant to be used heavily for many years. The British seemed to make many of there guns as artistic pieces. They paid more attention to lines and balance as well as fit and finish. Why is that? Is it because in the last century that very few hunting opportunities have been open to the British? Thus those who had the ability to hunt were usually wealthier and could/would pay for the extra artistic efforts? My guess is that if there were more opportunity for the average Brit to hunt, there would be a lot more utilitarian pieces in addition to the high end Best guns.

As someone in the other thread stated. It really isn’t fair to compare a modern entry level DR maker to those that make Best grade guns. Thus in general (as have been most of my comparisons) I’d say the British best guns are rivaled by a few Italian firms. I’d say that someone like Searcy should best be compared with the Germans such as Merkel. After all the entry level guns of any firm are just flat made for different purpose and clientele than those that make best guns.

Again just my thoughts and opinions

Bill