Bret4207
At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Nice looking set up. With your reloads you might look into the Hornady 45 grain Hornet bullet instead of the 45 grain flat point bullets from Speer and Hornady. Flatten things out a bit for you. Wasn't the model 43 considered the poor mans model 70 back in the day? These days it's top of the line and make nice little varmint walkers.
It was an economy rifle back in the day, yes. It was meant to get in on the post WW2 varminter craze.