Sharps rifle
Type	Rifle, carbine
Place of origin	United States
Service history
In service	1850–1881
Production history
Designer	Christian Sharps
Designed	1848
Unit cost	$30 (1861)^[1]
No. built	120,000+
Variants	Single set trigger (regular army) Double set trigger
Specifications
Mass	9.5 lb (4.3 kg)
Length	47 inches (1,200 mm)
Cartridge	.52-caliber 475-grain projectile with 50-grain (3.2 g) cartridge, later converted to .45-70 Government in 1873.
Action	Falling block
Rate of fire	8–10 shots per minute
Muzzle velocity	1,200 ft/s (370 m/s)
Effective firing range	500 yd (460 m)
Maximum firing range	1,000 yd (910 m)
Feed system	1 round
Sights	open ladder type

Sharps Rifle Serial Number History
Sharps Carbine Serial Number Lookup
Original Sharps Rifle Serial Numbers

Sharps Old Reliable Serial Number Lookup 89584491e5 Dances With Wolves Shiloh Sharps Rifle. Serial number USC 014,. The carbine has the boxed Old Reliable marking on the top of the barrel,.Sharps 'Old Reliable'.40 Caliber Discussion in '. And they will each get a Sharps when I pass.
Jan 13, 2016 The tang serial number. Antique Sharps Rifle Collectors Sharps Longarms Reference Site Scarce U.S. Springfield Second Type Sharps Model 1870 Breechloading Rifle Serial Number 78. For all Sharp parts and accessories please call our toll free number 1-800-BE SHARP Affected units have serial numbers in the ranges below. Serial Number Ranges.
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The Blue Book of Gun Values lists the serial numbers for those guns. The Model 1863 is listed as from 75000 - 140000. Cartridge conversions rechambered the guns to.50/70 metallic. On the left side of the buttstock you will see the initials D.F.C. If the gun was a conversion.

Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore single-shot rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848, and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874 the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and had been adopted by the armies of a number of nations. It was one of the few designs to successfully transition to metallic cartridge use.

Feb 25, 2005 During that time rifles manufactured by Shiloh carried the 'Old Reliable' trademark. When the companies went their seperate ways, appearantly C. Sharps somehow retained legal rights to the trademark. Sharps serial numbers have a '74' prefix, I.E. (That is, assuming the rifle in question is an 1874.).

The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West due to their appearances in many Western-genre movies and books. Perhaps as a result, a number of different rifle companies currently offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle.

2Sharps military rifles and carbines

History[edit]

Sharps' initial rifle was patented September 12, 1848^[2] and manufactured by A. S. Nippes at Mill Creek, (Philadelphia) Pennsylvania, in 1850.^[3]

The second model used the Maynard tape primer, and surviving examples are marked Edward Maynard - Patentee 1845. In 1851 the second model was brought to the Robbins & Lawrence Company of Windsor, Vermont where the Model 1851 was developed for mass production. Rollin White of the R&L Co. invented the knife-edge breech block and self-cocking device for the 'box-lock' Model 1851. This is referred to as the 'First Contract', which was for 10,000 Model 1851 carbines - of which approximately 1,650 were produced by R&L in Windsor.^[3]

In 1851 the 'Second Contract' was made for 15,000 rifles and the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company was organized as a holding company with $1,000 in capital and with John C. Palmer as president, Christian Sharps as engineer, and Richard S. Lawrence as master armorer and superintendent of manufacturing. Sharps was to be paid a royalty of $1 per firearm and the factory was built on R&L's property in Hartford, Connecticut.^[3]

The Model 1851 was replaced in production by the Model 1853. Christian Sharps left the company in 1855 to form his own manufacturing company called 'C. Sharps & Company' in Philadelphia; Richard S. Lawrence continued as the chief armorer until 1872 and developed the various Sharp models and their improvements that made the rifle famous.^[3] In 1874, the company was reorganized and renamed 'The Sharps Rifle Company' and it remained in Hartford until 1876, whereupon it relocated to Bridgeport, Connecticut.^[3]

The Sharps rifle would play a prominent role in the Bleeding Kansas conflict during the 1850s, particularly in the hands of anti-slavery forces. The Sharps rifles supplied to anti-slavery factions earned the name Beecher's Bibles, after the famed abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher.

The 1874-pattern Sharps was a particularly popular rifle that led to the introduction of several derivatives in quick succession. It handled a large number of .40- to .50-caliber cartridges in a variety of loadings and barrel lengths.^[4]^[5]

Hugo Borchardt designed the Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878, the last rifle made by the Sharps Rifle Co. before its closing in 1881.^[3]

Reproductions of the paper cartridge Sharps M1859 and M1863 Rifle and Carbine, the metallic cartridge 1874 Sharps Rifle, and Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878 are being manufactured today. They are used in Civil War re-enacting, hunting and target shooting.^[6]

Sharps military rifles and carbines[edit]

Sharps Model 1852 'Slanting Breech' Carbine, open for loading, two primer-tapes

The military Sharps rifle was a falling block rifle used during and after the American Civil War in multiple variations. Along with being able to use a standard percussion cap, the Sharps had a fairly unusual pellet primer feed. This was a device which held a stack of pelleted primers and flipped one over the nipple each time the trigger was pulled and the hammer fell—making it much easier to fire a Sharps from horseback than a gun employing individually loaded percussion caps.^[7]

The Sharps Rifle was produced by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut. It was used in the Civil War by multiple Union units, most famously by the U.S. Army marksmen known popularly as 'Berdan's Sharpshooters' in honor of their leader Hiram Berdan.^[8] The Sharps made a superior sniper weapon of greater accuracy than the more commonly issued muzzle-loadingrifled muskets. This was due mainly to the higher rate of fire of the breech loading mechanism and superior quality of manufacture, as well as the ease of which it could be reloaded from a kneeling or prone position.^[9]

At this time however, many officers were distrustful of breech-loading weapons on the grounds that they would encourage men to waste ammunition. In addition, the Sharps rifle was expensive to manufacture (three times the cost of a muzzle-loading Springfield rifle) and so only 11,000 of the Model 1859s were produced. Most were unissued or given to sharpshooters, but the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves (which still carried the old-fashioned designation of a 'rifle regiment') carried them until being mustered out in 1864.^[9]

Sharps military carbine[edit]

Original 1863 carbine in .50-70 Government.

The carbine version was very popular

Sharps Rifle Serial Numbers