From my readings of history I gather the preferred method of operating bolt handles when they were situated at a 90 degree angle was the palming method but the English taught those operating the SMLE to use the ball and socket method with their fingers and a very good operator could place forty rounds on a man sized target in sixty seconds. that is pretty fast when you consider they were using a 10 round magazine so had to reload from a stripper clip three times during those same sixty seconds!
I was taught to shoot bolt rifles by my dad and uncles (all Canadian WWII vets, so trained on the SMLE). I never used any technique to manipulate the bolt other than the thumb-plus-two-fingers method until I bought a surplus Swedish Mauser in the 80's, and was taught to use the palm-strike method by a fellow who happened to be a Wehrmacht combat vet expatriated to Canada after the War.
Most guys I hunted with in high school bought a surplus SMLE as our first centerfire rifle, as they could be obtained for less than $20 even in the late 60's, and surplus ammo was cheapcheapcheap for practicing. The stripper clips were 5-rounders, although the detachable box magazines would hold 10 rounds.
My first SMLE was a No. 6 Mk I ("jungle carbine") that I picked up at a garage sale in 1978 for $100. It was a beat-up old thing, truly an "Old Ugly" in its own right. Sold it a couple years later for the same price so I could buy a shotgun! That's one of many gun deals I've made in this life I wish I could take back!
