The problem with the 7400 jamming............. The bolt has rotating locking lugs. As the bolt reaches its rearward position through recoil the lugs try to keep rotating and bang themselves into the acrion rails cut into the receiver. The locking lugs are harder than the receiver so eventually they will dent up the rails inside the receiver bad enough the gun will jam up tight. And if shot enough you will eventually kill the gun. Even if you keep it perfectly clean and in otherwise great condition.

Basically the gun destroys itself through shooting it. If I were you I would look for another rifle for your wife.

Unless she is abnormally small she should be able to handle a bolt action rifle chambered in .270. My 11 year old son loves to shoot mine and has no problem with the recoil at all. A great light recoil option would be a bolt rifle chambered in either .308 or 7mm-08. Both of these will provide her with plenty enough power for elk with light recoil.

If she is recoil sensative then you can forget about the muzzle break. More people get scared to shoot guns due to the noise than the actual recoil of the rifle. Excessive muzzle blast can be a big factor in people not wanting to shoot a particular gun and they can develop a flinch from noise a lot faster than through recoil.

Rather than spending the money for the break and the labor cost involved, get that gunsmith of yours to fit a bolt action rifle to her corectly and this will provide a much more enjoyable shooting experience than any muzzle brake ever will. A good break will run you between $75.00 and $125.00 and the labor will cost about $100.00 so you are going to add another $200 to the cost of the rifle. This money would be much better spent fitting the rifle to your wife.

A good recoil pad will also do wonders at reducing felt recoil. I removed the solid rubber pad on my fathers 7mm mag and fitted a Pachmayr pad to it. The felt recoil went down dramaticly. It made a noticibly huge difference in the recoil of that rifle.