Recoil per se doesn't exist within the gun since the barrels and stock are locked to the action. However, there is a force transmission to any object interfering with the free recoil of the gun. The weak point in the force transmission from the action to the butt is at the stock head and wrist. If the recoil force is too high, you can literally split the wood. And, if the stock develops any looseness, you will get battering of the wood. We would be more correct to say the stock is damaged by transmitting recoil force.
Wear to the hinge pin/hook during firing can occur from battering or relative movement. Battering occurs where there is a bit of off-face so the hook gets a run at the hinge pin. Any strain movement between the hook and pin will result in surface grinding. The action will bend slightly during firing and this changes the position of the hook relative to the pin; maybe only a fraction of a degree, but enough that there is movement. Clean, high pressure lube will minimize metal to metal contact and fine particle grinding, but can't completely eliminate it. Tight on-face, along with hard surfaces on the pin and hook minimize battering.
Let me know if that is not clear.
Not perfectly clear, especially when I try to reconcile this post with the earlier statement...
"Larry, I edited to set my comments apart in red. Also, yes, I went further into wear to locking parts and attributed this to pressure rather than recoil."
Which seems to exclude recoil as a source of wear to locking parts.
You say "recoil force doesn't exist within the gun..." and later in the same paragraph refer to "battering of the wood" and the crux of the paragraph seems to say that "transmitted recoil force batters the wood."
Your second paragraph covers "movement, grinding, and battering" (metal wear) without using the word "recoil."
Is or,is not, this movement, grinding and battering of metal parts "within the gun" due to the same "transmitted recoil force"
that batters the stock?
Is it not true that it is recoil force transmitted to poorly mated metal surfaces that causes their grinding, battering, loosening, i.e.; wear?
If not, then it's CHAMBER PRESSURE and NOT RECOIL that causes the pin and hook to be battered? Clear as mud.
