Clark
I'm with you, and will be interested to see what your results indicate.

It will take more resources and time than most of us have available, but it would be a good article in a magazine such as Handloader or Rifle.

Good luck.

Jerry

JonA, can you please be more specific with regard to your FEA analysis? In my experience FEA stresses go UP with model refinement not down! What FEA software are you using? The mesh seems to be very coarse, is that a proprietary Boeing software, or is it ProMechanica, NASTRAN, etc?

Thanks,
Axel