"I apologize if my questions seem abrupt. I am very serious by nature. Some would say, generally sober."

Oh, no problem. Your questions are fine and perfectly legitimate. I'm only happy to answer them and appreciate your thanking me!

"Engineering details regarding the hollowing out of the action are especially prized."

Metal was removed from the ring, the action was threaded to accept a barrel, then underwent a second heat treatment. A LOT of the people that say these guns are time bombs point out that removing that much metal literally reverses the heat treating process. And that's 100% correct. Which is why the German gunmakers re-heat treated them. Compare these to the aforementioned (and extremely dangerous) Chassepot conversions, which were not re-heat treated.

Technically, every German sporting rifle, Geha, Remo, and Hard Hit Heart made on a Gewehr 98 action from 1919-1933 is "demilitarized." The Versailles Treaty story is just that...a story. I've tried repeatedly to verify it and cannot. What more likely happened in the case of the Geha and Hard Hit Heart (but NOT the Remo) was that Spandau didn't want to lose a ton of money, sold their subcontracted actions to a group of several German gunmakers who were watching the Remo succeed on the international scene, and that was the birth of the Geha circa 1926 or 1927 (a DRP only lasted 7 years).

Why make them into shotguns and not rifles? Simple. They were looking for success in an international market. While rifle ammunition at the time was fairly country-specific (when was the last time anyone saw an American-made sporter in 8x60JS?), shotgun ammo was relatively universal, especially 12 Ga., 16 Ga., and 20 Ga. As such, they could sell the gun on the US and British markets by A) copying an existing design (the Remo) and B) putting comparatively minimal effort into the conversion (by that I mean focusing solely on the action while ignoring things such as engraving and high grade wood).

"I am not saying their base action is inadequate in any way, but only that a modern shell could easily cause a problem."

I would agree in the sense that your bolthead stands a better shot of getting ejected (the solution to which is actually easy if you notice it...just pop it back in), a person gets careless with checking the bolt after every shot, and they get the backblast from the primer in the eye. While using the gun as a single shot only does help reduce this, it doesn't eliminate it.

Also, just to clarify; when the gun is cocked with a round in the chamber, the bolthead is such that it can't be blown out. The bolthead can't be pushed out...rather, it's all too easy to pull it out with a manual cycling of the action.

If anyone is wondering what I feed mine just to get an idea of what I advocate using, I use Polywad Vintager 12 Gauge 2 1/2", which is extremely wimpy. Works just fine, and doesn't crack the stock.