First:
Yesterday I was down because I broke out the 45-70 and had troubles. . .
It's a beautiful rifle, immaculately cared for. 1975 Marlin (1895, 22" barrel). Of course, I'm doing my usual begin at max and go up. Went to some 500 grainers that I cast a week ago. I have to shoot these single shot. Damned if I didn't get one stuck. Had to pull the bolt, outside, in the rain, and mad. . . Ended up disassembling the gun. . . then finally got it squared away and the SOB would not lever! So I took the lever back out and went into the house. Got on castboolits "chat", a rarity for me; a guy on there sent me his phone number to try and help. Turns out he's a gunsmith, retired. He spent an hour and then went and got his own and disassembled it trying to help, ONE HELLUVA GUY! Well, we gave up. This morning I got up and fixed it. No idea how I did it. No more spitzer'ish bullets. From now own its paper patched PB 500 grainers.
So today I went back outside and sent 10 420 grain FN bullets downrange. I loaded 46.5 grains of IMR 3031, used CCI 250 primers. Beautiful. It's a bit of a different animal. I had noticed yesterday before the disaster that the rounds were hammering the backstop. Well it was affirmed today, that 45-70 packs a punch. The recoil is not bad at all despite what folks say. (Before I came in yesterday I shot a cylinder from the BFR, to try and relax me now that's interesting, as always. It will definitely wake you up in the mornin.) I finished up with the 30-06, today, using 185 grain cast bullets atop 21.5 grains of WC820. Fun, fun. I bought one of those cheap Rem700 ADLs, with the cheesy scope. You know what? That rifle is just fine, as is. I had intended to put some big money into it by basically tossing everything except the action. Going to make myself a long range rifle. Changed my mind; glad I did. Took the .44 mag (see sig) out to blast some HPs out of it but decided I was having too much fun Shoot it tomorrow.
I'm hooked on shooting that 45-70! I still need to understand why the the large screw on the left side of the receiver cannot be tightened down w/o locking up the action. But for now I'm just backing it out a few turns. Might file some of it off The 45-70 is mild as milk compared to say shooting 600 grain slugs out of a Mossberg 590 at 1665 fps. That kicks a bit.
Thanks to all of the fine folks here for encouragement and advice