Stupidly enough, w/ a L-E design the surest way to good case life for reloading purposes IS to LUBE the cases w/ the slickest high pressure lubricant you can find. Since the action WILL flex, allowing the entire case to slide along in contact w/ the bolt head will prevent localized deformation.

Is it dangerously "hard" on the action? Not so far that any hard evidence can support to this point!

Are there potential dangerous consequences? Only if the endurance limit is lowered to the point that the action is not likely to required have a complete overhaul or retirement due to other wear factors.

"Fatigue" engineering wasn't really quantified until the Post WWII period, only reaching a fair level of maturity in the mid to late 1950's, I think. So, the Enfield designers had no way to put "hard" numbers to this aspect of design w/o actually physically testing actions to failure. That would have required MANY samples as the endurance limit can vary by a factor of ten pretty easily due to many factors.

Given that there are no known failures of this sort even after many years of service INCLUDING in 7.62x51 caliber, it is appearing to be a NON-ISSUE.

I've found a crappy No.4 barreled action that I'm thinking we'll rechamber to 300 Win Mag or maybe 300 WSM and shoot it off a test stand for a bit. Both dry and lubed. 0.308" and 0.311" bullets providing it holds up. Just gotta see if I can minimize the reamer cost. WBS2111 thought he had one, but no joy, or we would have done it yesterday.

Oh, BTW. somewhere there's a likely failure model that I postulated (w/ no evidence except bolt head failures, though) in another thread. Let's see if I can find it.