Miller,
As you know, for the dolls head to load up, the hingepin or underlug would have to shear. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but historically, frame have failed on the beam or at the fillet of the watertable/breachface.
Chuck;
You or I one is missing something here. The frame of a break action double is in the form of a L, laid over with the long leg horizontal forming the bar & the short leg vertical forming the standing breech. The axial thrust applied to the standing breech thus has a tendency to bend/flex the standing breech backward, which if severe enough results in that failure at "the fillet of the watertable/breachface" you mentioned. This flexing is exactly what the Doll's Head is designed to prevent by opposing that axial thrust from "Both" sides. Its sort of like when I used to hitch a drawn plow to the flat drawbar of my old John Deere I did so with a "Clevis" (Shackle to a rigger). Worked much better than trying to simply bolt two flat bars together as it had to be able to pivot for doing corners. You Chuck would have been the last one I would have suspected of failing to grasp this principal.
