My experience? OK, from open tops to SAA's. I've seen head space open up and end shake increase due to frame stretch on SAA's. On open tops I've seen very little wear except when you get into the Walkers. I've shot one will full house loads till the arbor stretched enough that the hammer wouldn't set the caps off, along with the wedge being beating up and the wedge slot battered up. I will admit I've never seen in person a SAA blown up, but I have seen a few that started out tight and after a few thousand rounds of heavy loads get very loose, including damage to the firing pin hole in the frame. Of course those were not real case hardened colts, but there you go.
As I said, a few warm shots probably won't hurt it, a steady diet of them will shorten the life.
First, the thread is about the Cattleman, or 1873, so your experience with open tops, is irrelevant to the subject.
So you've "seen" headspace open up and endshake increase? Were these your revolvers or someone else's? If they were yours, how many of what load did you fire to cause the perceived problems? If they weren't yours, how many of what load did the owner fire? How do you know the problems were due to the frame stretching? Did you have before and after measurements of the frame or did you simply proclaim that it had stretched and call that good? Seems to me the cylinder spacer would be the first thing to take a battering, especially if it wasn't properly fitted.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming heavy loads did wear on the revolver, is it something terrible if a revolver "only" lasts a few thousand rounds when loaded and used to the cartridges potential? For Pete's sake! That sounds pretty good to me! I see nothing wrong with using a revolver and wearing it out. Sure, a revolver might last an eternity with CAS loads, but likewise my pickup would probably last several hundred thousand miles if I kept it in the garage, never pulled a trailer with it, and only drove it 30 mph when I did use it, but what's the point in that?
My personal experiences are quite the opposite of yours. I have two Uberti .44 Specials that I've wrung out pretty good. One way more than the other. As I mentioned in a previous post, I bought it used as a 44-40, fitted a .44 Special cylinder and have fired a few thousand rounds out of it since. I don't know exactly how many as my only reference is empty primer cartons and last time I figured it up, which was several months or maybe even a year ago, I was at about 3500 give or take a couple hundred. By now I've no doubt I'm at 4000 or better. Most of the loads have been a hair under max charges of Unique under a 258 gr. SWC, with the remainder being significantly over published max with the same bullet. Guess what? The revolver is as tight as ever and still shoots fist sized groups at 50 yds. So my experiences are pretty much the opposite of yours.
You go over published loads and you damage your gun you've got no one to blame but yourself, and hopefully nobody is standing close to you.
1) Why would I blame someone else if my choice of handloads damaged my firearm?
2) My range is private.