Here is an article by Dave Emary of Hornady ammunition. http://personal.stevens.edu/~gliberat/carcano/emary.html
The best case I can make for the strength of the Carcano was a personal experience attempting to blow one up for a hunter safety course video. I was asked by the Department of Game and Fish of New Mexico about 12 years ago to help them with this. At the time I was one of the ones ignorant about the Carcano, believing it to be a weak action and easy to take apart. Well, the morale to this story was a full case of Bullseye failed to do anything significant to the action or barrel. We finally had to fill a cartridge case with C4 explosive and detonate it to get anything that looked like what we wanted. One other incident I have experienced with the Carcano further convinces me of the great strength of these actions. In my early experiments with .268” bullets, and loading data for them, I had several incidents of extreme pressure. The bolt had to be opened with a hammer and the cartridge case appeared to be a belted magnum. The headspace of the gun had grown slightly but otherwise was fine and has been fired many times since. I know from my experience as a ballistician that pressures in excess of 90,000 psi are required to do this type of damage to a cartridge case. A good condition Carcano rifle is as safe and strong as any other military bolt-action rifle you will encounter.
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