Wildcating is a pretty American activity, but in many ways it seems to me to have more life in other parts of the world. I'm not saying there is more of it, because the US has so many shooters and supplies are so easy to get, and cheap. But it seems practical in places that have a lot of weird rules to dodge, etc... There are now so many cartridges in fairly regular production, that there aren't many practical reasons to diverge from stanard offerings.
However, if you have controls on materials, you may start looking at oddball solutions that work because of the controls. Or they work due to cost. In trying to make up some low cost 500s the 50 Alaskan, and the 50-110 are good base cases for what I want to make. About 1/3rd the cost of anything else out there. All they need is a little reshaping on the lathe. As far as I can see, if you can grind your own reamers, there isn't a huge downside to this kind of approach as you can always use the barrel for a more standard option if that seems wise. Sometimes one has to snake an approach through the unavailability of almost any parts for a custom rifle, so having control over the cartridges frees up a lot of options. Still, you can just order existing rifles, so really it has to be something you want to do, and already have the tools for.
