The Sharps Rifle is one of the most consequential firearms in American history — and one whose modern reproductions are still actively built, hunted with, and competed with today. This guide covers both: the deep historical narrative of how the Sharps Rifle came to define a half-century of breech-loading rifle development, and a practical buyer’s framework for the modern reproductions that bring those rifles back into the hands of working shooters.
If you’re considering a Sharps Rifle reproduction for cowboy action shooting, BPCR silhouette competition, long-range black-powder target work, recreational buffalo hunting, living-history reenactment, or — in the case of the Chiappa Little Sharps — modern small-bore plinking and hunting, the second half of this guide maps every current production model from the major manufacturers — Davide Pedersoli, Shiloh Rifle, C. Sharps Arms, Cimarron, Taylor’s, Uberti, Armi Sport, and Chiappa — to the use case it was built for. Before we get there, the history is worth understanding, because it explains why so many distinct reproduction patterns exist today.
The Setting: A Patent in 1848
On June 27, 1874, at a buffalo-hunter outpost in the Texas Panhandle called Adobe Walls, a hide hunter named Billy Dixon picked up a borrowed rifle and made what would become one of the most famous shots in American firearms history. The siege had been going on for three days. Roughly 700 to 1,200 Comanche, Cheyenne, and Kiowa warriors under Quanah Parker were pressing twenty-eight defenders. Around 1,500 yards out — past the range at which any reasonable rifleman would have considered a shot — a group of warriors on horseback was visible on a low ridge. Dixon raised the rifle, held over, and fired. He unhorsed and wounded one of the warriors. The U.S. Army later surveyed the distance at 1,538 yards — nearly seven-eighths of a mile. The siege broke shortly after.
The rifle Dixon used that day was a Sharps Model 1874 chambered in .50-90, with a 34-inch heavy octagon barrel. It was already, by reputation, the rifle the buffalo hunters trusted at distance. Two years later, in 1876, the Sharps Rifle Company would begin marking its barrels with the trademark “Old Reliable.” Dixon’s rifle predated that mark — but the reputation that earned the mark predated the trademark by a decade.
That story is the kernel of why the Sharps Rifle still matters. Christian Sharps received his patent for a falling-block breech-loading mechanism on September 12, 1848, at a moment when the U.S. Army was still issuing muzzle-loading muskets and would continue to do so through most of the Civil War. By the time the Sharps Rifle Company collapsed in bankruptcy in 1881, the rifle that bore his name had armed Berdan’s Sharpshooters, defined the buffalo-hunter era, set the standard for long-range target shooting at Creedmoor, and demonstrated to a generation of military planners that breech-loading was not just possible — it was inevitable.
Christian Sharps the Man
Christian Sharps was born January 2, 1810, in Washington, New Jersey. As a young man he apprenticed at Harpers Ferry Armory in Virginia, where he worked under Captain John H. Hall — the designer of the Hall rifle, one of the earliest breech-loading firearms accepted into U.S. military service. Hall had pioneered the use of interchangeable parts manufacturing at Harpers Ferry, and Sharps absorbed both the precision-machining methods and the engineering instinct that breech-loading was the future.
What Sharps did not invent was the breech-loader itself. Hall and others had built breech-loaders before him. What Sharps did was productize it — design a falling-block mechanism that was strong enough to handle military pressures, simple enough to manufacture in volume, and reliable enough that a soldier or hunter could trust it in the field. His patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,763, was issued September 12, 1848.
Sharps himself remained more inventor than industrialist. The first contract production of his Sharps Rifle was handled by A.S. Nippes of Mill Creek, Pennsylvania, in 1850. The Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company was organized as a holding company in Hartford, Connecticut on October 9, 1851, with $100,000 in capital — but Sharps was not its primary owner. Investors held the controlling interest, and within a few years Sharps and the company parted ways. Sources differ on the exact date of his departure: some place it in 1853, others in 1855 (the year manufacturing actually moved to Hartford from Vermont). What is certain is that by the mid-1850s, Christian Sharps had left the company that bore his name and founded C. Sharps & Company in Philadelphia, where he focused on smaller designs — breech-loading pistols, pistol-rifles, and the four-barrel pepperbox.
He never operated the Hartford factory that built the iconic 1859, 1863, and 1874 rifles. His name was on the action, not the floor. He died of tuberculosis in Vernon, Connecticut on March 12, 1874 — the same year the Model 1874 reached its peak production. He was sixty-four years old.
The Mechanism: A Falling Block, Refined
The Sharps Rifle action is a vertical-falling block operated by a lever that doubles as the trigger guard. Drop the lever down and forward, the breech block descends, and the rear of the chamber opens at the top of the action. Insert a paper or linen cartridge, then a metallic round in the later cartridge models. Raise the lever, the block rises, and in the paper-cartridge designs the rising block shears the rear of the cartridge to expose the powder for ignition by the percussion cap.
Earlier Sharps Rifle actions — the 1849, 1851, 1852, and 1853 models — used a slanting breech block. From the Model 1859 onward, the block was straight-cut. Modern reproduction makers almost universally build the straight-breech designs, both because they’re easier to machine and because the bulk of the historically significant Sharps rifles used them.
The cartridge that fed the action evolved across the rifle’s commercial lifetime — from paper to linen to self-contained metallic rounds — and the ignition system evolved with it, from Maynard tape primers to percussion caps to centerfire primers. The full arc of that evolution is treated in detail below in “The Sharps Cartridge Arc.” For now, what matters is that the same falling-block action accommodated all of it: Christian Sharps’ original 1848 mechanism was designed cleverly enough that it could be carried forward across two generations of cartridge technology without fundamental redesign.
Hartford to Bridgeport: The Company Timeline
The Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company moved through several phases. After the 1851 holding-company organization in Hartford, early production was contracted to Robbins & Lawrence of Windsor, Vermont — a firm whose advanced machining and tooling made the early Models 1851 and 1853 possible. The Model 1851 became famous as the “John Brown Sharps,” carried by abolitionists during the conflicts that earned Kansas the name “Bleeding.”
Manufacturing relocated to Hartford in 1855 and remained there through the Civil War. Between 1861 and 1865, Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company produced more than 100,000 firearms for the Union — the cash cow being the cavalry carbine (over 80,000 units) more than the infantry rifle (roughly 11,000). Buyers were primarily federal cavalry units, but Berdan’s Sharpshooters got the rifle that would make them legendary.
In 1872 the company introduced the .50-90 Sharps cartridge — the round that, paired with the Model 1874 platform, defined the “Big Fifty” era of buffalo hunting. In 1874 the company reorganized as the Sharps Rifle Company, dropping “Manufacturing” from the name. In 1876 it moved operations to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and that same year the trademark “Old Reliable” began appearing on barrels — the company finally formalizing what its customers had been calling the Sharps Rifle informally for years.
The end came quickly. Hugo Borchardt designed the hammerless Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878 — patent 1877, coil springs replacing flat ones, reputedly the strongest single-shot action of its era. But by 1880 the bison were nearly gone, and Winchester’s lever-action repeating rifles had captured the hunter market. The Sharps-Borchardt produced only 8,700 rifles before the company declared bankruptcy in 1881. Borchardt himself left for Europe, where he designed the C-93 semi-automatic pistol in 1893 — the direct ancestor of the Luger. The last Sharps Rifle was, in lineage if not in name, the first step toward the modern semi-automatic handgun.
Berdan’s Sharpshooters
Hiram Berdan was a civilian marksman with political connections. By July 1861 he had War Department approval to raise the 1st U.S. Sharpshooter Regiment, with a tryout standard that filtered hard: ten shots in a ten-inch circle at 200 yards, with an average distance of five inches or less from center. The men who made the cut were the best riflemen in the Union Army.
They wanted Sharps rifles. Berdan made the case directly, but bureaucratic friction held up delivery; his men were initially issued Colt revolving rifles and were not pleased about it. The Sharps New Model 1859 rifles finally arrived on May 8, 1862 — chambered in .52 caliber, firing a 475-grain bullet over 50 grains of powder, with double set triggers added at Berdan’s specific request. Those double set triggers are the reason “Berdan model” is its own variant in modern reproduction catalogs to this day.
The regiment fought at Yorktown, Gaines’s Mill, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg, but their canonical engagement was the second day of Gettysburg. On July 2, 1863, near Devil’s Den and the wheat field below Little Round Top, roughly 100 of Berdan’s Sharpshooters supported by the 3rd Maine held off elements of Longstreet’s Corps for about twenty minutes — firing approximately 10,000 rounds in that span. Their job was to buy time. They bought it with rate of fire that no muzzle-loading regiment could have matched.
The Sharps Carbine in Cavalry Service
The infantry rifles that armed Berdan’s Sharpshooters made the famous Sharps story, but the volume business was the carbine. Between 1861 and 1865, the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company built approximately 90,000 cavalry carbines for the Union — outproducing the infantry rifle by more than seven to one — and these short-barreled Sharps Rifles equipped Union cavalry units across nearly every major theater of the war.
The New Model 1859 carbine and its 1863 successor were 22-inch barrel, .52-caliber falling-block weapons with an overall length of 39.125 inches. Like the infantry rifle, they fired linen or paper combustible cartridges ignited by either the Maynard tape primer or a standard musket cap. A trained cavalry trooper could sustain 8 to 10 rounds per minute from a Sharps carbine — three to four times the rate of a muzzle-loading carbine of the same era, and a transformative advantage in the sweeping mounted engagements that defined the war’s middle years.
The Sharps Carbine’s most consequential moment came in the opening hours of the Battle of Gettysburg. On the morning of July 1, 1863, Brig. Gen. John Buford’s 1st Cavalry Division — primarily Sharps-armed, with the lead brigade including the 8th Illinois Cavalry, 12th Illinois, 3rd Indiana, and 8th New York — fought a delaying action that bought time for Union infantry to reach the field. The first shot of Gettysburg was fired at approximately 7:30 a.m. by Lt. Marcellus E. Jones of Company E, 8th Illinois Cavalry, using Cpl. Levi Shafer’s borrowed Sharps carbine rested on a fence rail. The dismounted carbine line that Buford’s troopers held against advancing Confederate infantry — buying perhaps four critical hours before Reynolds’ I Corps arrived — was a Sharps line. (A persistent myth holds that Buford’s cavalry carried Spencer repeating rifles at Gettysburg; the ordnance returns are unambiguous that they did not. Spencers in significant numbers at Gettysburg were with Custer’s 5th and 6th Michigan Cavalry on July 3, not with Buford’s screening force on July 1.)
By 1864 the Spencer repeating carbine, with its seven-shot tubular magazine and weatherproof rimfire metallic cartridge, began displacing the Sharps in many Union cavalry units. The Sharps’ paper or linen cartridge was vulnerable to moisture and degraded in storage, and ordnance officers documented ammunition “found useless after long storage.” The Spencer’s 20-rounds-per-minute sustained fire was simply faster, and by 1865 the Chief of Ordnance acknowledged the Spencer was “generally regarded with favor, and as being the best arm that had been in service.” But for the central years of the war — 1862 through early 1864 — the Sharps was the dominant Union cavalry carbine.
The Big Fifty Era and Adobe Walls
After Appomattox, the surplus 1859 and 1863 carbines were converted to .50-70 Government starting in 1867. The Model 1869 followed as a purpose-built metallic-cartridge platform, and then the Model 1874 — production-launched in 1871 but marketed under the 1874 designation that stuck — became the rifle that emptied the southern bison herd.
“Big Fifty” is collector and period shorthand for the heavy .50-caliber Sharps cartridges: the .50-90 Sharps introduced in 1872, plus the .50-110 and the .50-140 Sharps Straight that followed. These cartridges were paired with heavy octagon barrels — typically 30 to 34 inches — and used to drop bison from 300 yards or more. At those distances the herd would not spook from the sound or the scent, and a hide hunter working from a stand could drop dozens of animals in a day before the herd moved.
A working corrective is in order, though, before the romance gets too thick. The most-hunted Sharps calibers among professional hide hunters were probably the .50-70 Government and .45-70 Government — workhorse cartridges that did the volume business. The Big Fifty rounds were for the longest shots; an everyday Sharps in a hide-hunter’s wagon was as likely to be chambered for .44-77, .45-70, or .50-70 as it was for the famous .50-90 or larger.
Billy Dixon’s June 27, 1874 shot at Adobe Walls is verified: the U.S. Army surveyed the distance at 1,538 yards. Dixon called it a “scratch shot” — meaning lucky — and historians have generally taken him at his word. He did not kill the warrior. He wounded and unhorsed him, and the psychological effect on the besieging force broke the standoff. Dixon went on to win the Medal of Honor at Buffalo Wallow later that same year.
Bill Tilghman, the lawman and former buffalo hunter, allegedly killed 7,500 bison with his Sharps over his career — a claim that is traditional rather than independently verifiable. The rifle itself, serial number 53858, a .40-caliber with a 32-inch barrel, is on display at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. It is real. The 7,500 number is alleged.
The Bison Herd and the Sharps Rifle’s Role
The buffalo era was not a slow decline. It was an industrial-scale slaughter that reduced the American bison population from an estimated 30 to 60 million in pre-1830 peak, to roughly 5 to 8 million by 1870, and to 541 individuals counted by William Hornaday in the United States by 1889. The peak slaughter years were 1872 to 1874, when an estimated 1.2 million bison were killed annually.
The numbers from the railroad shipping records anchor the scale. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad alone shipped 459,463 buffalo hides east during 1872 to 1874 (per Col. Richard Irving Dodge’s contemporaneous count). Competing carriers — the Kansas Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific — likely moved equal or greater volumes, putting total documented hide shipments at approximately 1.38 million across those three years. A single hide yard at Dodge City, Kansas held 40,000 hides in 1878.
The Sharps Rifle was the rifle of the professional hide hunter through this peak. The .50-70 Government, .50-90 Sharps, .45-110 Sharps, and .40-90 Sharps were the dominant working calibers — chosen for long-range accuracy on standing herds, the strong falling-block action that handled heavy black-powder charges, and reloadable brass cases that allowed field reloading between hunting days. The Mooar brothers, J. Wright Mooar and his brother John, are credited with originating the commercial hide market: in 1871-1872 they shipped a test lot of 57 hides east, which generated a Pennsylvania tannery order for 2,000 more — and the rush was on. J. Wright Mooar is reputed to have killed approximately 20,000 buffalo over a nine-year career using a .50-90 Sharps as his primary rifle. The figure is widely cited but has not been independently audited.
The Sharps was not the only hide-hunter rifle, despite the romance literature. The Remington Rolling Block in similar calibers competed heavily; Springfield trapdoor conversions in .50-70 killed substantial numbers; Ballard rifles also saw real service. The Sharps was the platform most closely associated with professional commercial hunting at scale — the rifle in the wagon when a hunter set up a stand and shot for a payday — but it was a tool of choice, not the sole instrument.
Federal policy was deliberately complicit. General Philip Sheridan addressed the Texas legislature in 1875 in opposition to a proposed buffalo protection law, arguing that hide hunters “are destroying the Indians’ commissary… [doing] more in the last two years… to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty years.” The Army’s senior leadership saw the buffalo slaughter as a tool of subjugation, and policy followed. By 1884 U.S. Army surveys counted approximately 325 wild bison in the United States; by 1889 the recorded population — including reservation and private herds — was Hornaday’s 541. The Sharps was the tool of choice. It was not the cause. Railroad expansion, tannery technology, federal policy, and a market that paid well for hides combined to make the slaughter possible — and the Sharps Rifle was the rifle that worked best for the men who carried it out.
Schuetzen Clubs and the 1874 Creedmoor Match
Outside the buffalo plains and the cavalry carbine line, the Sharps Rifle had a parallel life as a target rifle. Two distinct competitive traditions defined that life: the German-American Schuetzen clubs, and the Long Range Creedmoor matches that began in 1874.
The Schuetzen tradition was imported by 19th-century German immigrants, who brought with them a well-developed culture of offhand standing rifle competition at fixed distance — typically 200 yards in American clubs. By the 1870s and 1880s, Schuetzen clubs were major civic and social institutions across the eastern United States. Zettler’s Rifle Club at 209 Bowery in New York City was the premier indoor venue, hosting major championships through the early twentieth century. Schuetzen Park in North Bergen, New Jersey, opened by the United Schützen Association in 1872, included a dancing pavilion, music stand, beer garden, and shooting gallery — closer in social function to a 19th-century country club than a modern shooting range. Helvetia Rifle Club, the Newark Schuetzen Association, and the Brooklyn Schützen Corps were similar institutions.
Sharps Rifles were one of several preferred Schuetzen platforms. Heavy single-shot target rifles with set triggers, palm rests, and hooked buttplates — the configuration the Schuetzen tradition demanded — were also built by Ballard, Stevens-Pope, and Winchester (the High Wall and Low Wall). Sharps was respected and used, but it was not dominant in the dedicated Schuetzen niche; Ballard and Stevens-Pope rifles were equally or more common in serious competition. The Schuetzen tradition was sharply curtailed by anti-German sentiment during World War I; many clubs renamed, disbanded, or quietly went underground, and the tradition never recovered to its pre-war scale. The American Single Shot Rifle Association (ASSRA), founded in 1948, sanctions modern Schuetzen matches today; the 200-yard format remains standard.
The 1874 Creedmoor Long Range Match was a different proposition. On November 22, 1873, the Irish Rifle Association issued a challenge in the New York Herald to American riflemen for a long-range match at the new Creedmoor Range on Long Island. The match took place September 26, 1874, at three stages — 800, 900, and 1,000 yards. The American team, equipped with Sharps and Remington .44-caliber breech-loading single-shots firing paper-patched bullets over heavy black-powder charges, defeated the Irish team — using .45-caliber Rigby muzzleloaders — by a final score of 934 to 931. The Americans won the 800-yard stage 326 to 317; the Irish team took the 900 and 1,000 yards (312-310 and 302-298 respectively), but the cumulative margin held for the United States.
For this match and the long-range competitive tradition that followed, Sharps built 134 No. 1 Creedmoor rifles: 32-inch barrel, .44-90-2 5/8″ caliber, single trigger, weighing approximately 10 pounds. The match was internationally covered, catalyzed American long-range target shooting as a major civilian sport, and helped legitimize the breech-loading single-shot as a competitive target platform. The Sharps was not the sole Creedmoor rifle — Remington Rolling Block was equally prominent on the American team — but the No. 1 Creedmoor specifically was a milestone in long-range Sharps Rifle production.
Famous Sharps Owners and Documented Rifles
The Sharps Rifle owned by famous men is a category where myth and verifiable fact diverge sharply. A few documented cases are worth knowing — and a few common claims are worth correcting.
Theodore Roosevelt owned a .45-caliber Sharps Model 1874 sporting rifle as part of his 1883 Dakota Territory hunting outfit. Sources differ on the specific chambering — some cite .45-120, others .45-90 or .40-90 — but a .45-caliber Sharps Model 1874 is the well-attested rifle. Roosevelt wrote in Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885) about the rifle’s “vicious recoil” and clumsiness, and he transitioned to Winchester lever-action rifles for most of his subsequent hunting career. The Sharps was an early-period rifle in TR’s life, used primarily 1883 to 1885. Framing him as a Sharps man overstates his attachment; he was emphatically a Winchester man for most of his hunting years.
George A. Custer’s Sharps Model 1853 sporting rifle — a slant-breech sporting variant from the small production run of approximately 2,970 such rifles built between 1854 and 1859 — is held at the Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Custer’s 7th Cavalry regimental issue at Little Bighorn in 1876 was the Springfield Model 1873 carbine and the Colt Single Action Army revolver, not a Sharps; the Sharps Model 1853 was his personal sporting rifle, retained from earlier in his career. A separate Sharps carbine attributed to Cheyenne chief Black Kettle, taken by Custer as a Washita campaign trophy in 1868 and bearing Native American pictographs on the stock, also survives in documented provenance.
J. Wright Mooar — the buffalo hunter who, with his brother John W. and partner Charles Rath, originated the commercial bison hide market in 1871-1872 — used the .50-90 Sharps as his primary tool. Mooar is reputed to have killed approximately 20,000 buffalo over a nine-year career; the figure is widely cited in Texas history and Plains literature, though it has not been independently audited. He is also documented as having shot a white buffalo in fall 1876.
Frank H. Mayer arrived in the Texas Panhandle in 1872 and hunted with an 11-pound .40-90 Sharps with a 32-inch barrel, fitted with a German full-length scope and an early steel barrel-mounted bipod of his own design. Mayer’s memoir The Buffalo Harvest (1958, ghost-written with Charles B. Roth when Mayer was 100 years old) is detailed but historians flag embellishment in some figures and dating; the rifle, the scope, and the bipod innovation are well-attested, while specific kill counts should be treated with skepticism. Mayer himself claimed capability of 100 buffalo in a day for $300 gross — not as a routine practice.
Buffalo Bill Cody is NOT a documented Sharps owner. This is one of the most common popular-history errors. Cody’s famous buffalo rifle “Lucretia Borgia” was a .50-70 Springfield Model 1866 Allin Conversion (“trapdoor needle gun”), not a Sharps. The rifle is housed at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, and Cody himself wrote that he preferred the Springfield over the Sharps Big Fifty.
A Quick Myth-Bust
Three claims about Sharps rifles circulate widely and deserve correction.
“Sharpshooter” comes from “Sharps.” It does not. The word “sharp shooter” appears in the Edinburgh Advertiser on June 23, 1801 — describing North British Militia companies — almost a half-century before Christian Sharps’ patent. It is a calque of the German Scharfschütze (sharp + shooter), which was recorded in Jacobsson’s Technologisches Wörterbuch of 1781. The British 95th Rifle Regiment used the term in its modern military sense in 1802, fielding Baker rifles, well before the Sharps existed. What is true is that Berdan’s 1st U.S. Sharpshooter Regiment was armed with Sharps rifles, and the coincidence of name and function reinforced the term in American military vernacular. The rifle didn’t create the word. It cemented it.
“Old Reliable” was the rifle’s nickname from the start. The trademark “Old Reliable” was not stamped on barrels until 1876, after the company’s move to Bridgeport. Buffalo hunters had been calling the Model 1874 reliable for years, but a Sharps that bears the actual “Old Reliable” mark must necessarily date to 1876 or later. Billy Dixon’s rifle at Adobe Walls in June 1874 was a Sharps. It was not yet a marked “Old Reliable.”
Quigley Down Under was based on a true story. It was not. The 1990 Tom Selleck film features the fictional character Matthew Quigley. The rifle in the film was custom-built by Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Co. for the production: a Shiloh 1874 Hartford-pattern No. 3 Sporting with an 1863 patchbox, 34-inch barrel, .45-110. Shiloh’s order book is said to have exploded after the film. The cinema sold the rifle pattern far better than the buffalo years ever did. The film’s setting is also internally inconsistent — the script references the 1860 Colt revolver as “recent,” implying a 1860s setting, but the metallic-cartridge 1874 Sharps wasn’t introduced until 1871. The screenwriter reportedly asked Guns & Ammo whether a percussion breech-loader could shoot to 1,000 yards reliably, was told no, and was advised to set the film in the 1870s with the 1874 Sharps.
Modern Sharps Rifle Reproductions: The Manufacturers
The Sharps Rifle Company has been gone for nearly a century and a half. The Sharps Rifle, however, has never stopped being built. Today seven manufacturers and importers are responsible for nearly all current production, and understanding what each one offers is the foundation of buying intelligently.
Davide Pedersoli (Gardone V.T., Italy)
Pedersoli is the volume leader of Sharps Rifle reproductions worldwide and has produced approximately 80,000 units across all variants and brands as of recent estimates. The company sells under its own name and is the OEM for many of the rifles distributed in the U.S. by Cimarron, Taylor’s & Company, EMF, and Dixie Gun Works.
Pedersoli’s percussion 1859 and 1863 family includes the 1859 Cavalry Carbine (.54, 22-inch round barrel, banded, with patchbox), the 1859 Infantry rifle (30-inch barrel), the 1859 Berdan with double set triggers, the 1862 Confederate Carbine, and the 1863 Sharps Sporting (32-inch octagon, rust-brown finish, set trigger, drilled and tapped for Creedmoor sights).
Pedersoli’s cartridge 1874/1877 family is large enough to require a comparison table. The core models include the 1874 Cavalry Carbine, 1874 Sporting, 1874 Silhouette, 1874 Sporting Deluxe and Extra Deluxe (engraved versions), 1874 Little Betsy, 1874 Old West (maple or walnut stock), 1874 Boss, 1874 Business, 1874 Buffalo, 1874 Billy’s Sharps (Billy Dixon homage), 1874 “Q” Down Under Sporting (Quigley homage), and the 1877 Overbough Long Range. Calibers range across the working family — .45-70 Government is the most common, with .45-90, .45-110, and .45-120 available on the long-range and Buffalo models.
| Pedersoli model | Typical caliber | Barrel | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1859 Cavalry Carbine | .54 percussion | 22″ round, banded | Civil War reenactment, percussion shooting |
| 1859 Berdan | .54 percussion | 30″ round | Civil War reenactment with DST |
| 1863 Sharps Sporting | .54 percussion | 32″ octagon | Percussion target / hunting |
| 1874 Cavalry Carbine | .45-70 | 22″ round | Cowboy action |
| 1874 Sporting | .45-70 | 32″ octagon | General sporting / cowboy |
| 1874 Silhouette | .45-70 | 32″ octagon | BPCR silhouette competition |
| 1874 Buffalo | .45-70/.45-90/.45-110 | 30″ octagon | Buffalo-hunter style hunting |
| 1874 Down Under (Q) | .45-70/.45-90/.45-110 | 34″ octagon | Quigley homage / long range |
| 1877 Overbough Long Range | various | 30″ | Premium long-range target |
Pedersoli sits in the mid-tier price band — substantially less than the American custom builders, more than the most basic Italian reproductions. Build quality is consistent and parts availability is good.
Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Co. (Big Timber, Montana)
Shiloh, founded in 1983, is one of two American makers in the small Montana town of Big Timber that build Sharps Rifle reproductions to order. Shiloh’s distinguishing claim is that its parts will interchange with original Sharps rifles — a claim no other reproduction maker makes, and one that matters to collectors with original rifles in need of restoration. Lead times have historically run one to three years or longer, depending on configuration.
Shiloh’s lineup is built around the Model 1874 platform with multiple stock and barrel patterns: the No. 1 Sporter and No. 3 Sporter (different wood and trim grades), the Hartford (with the distinctive Hartford collar at the breech and pewter forend tip, replicating pre-1875 features), the Long Range Express, the Saddle Rifle, the Montana Roughrider, the Quigley (the rifle pattern that the 1990 film made famous), the Business Rifle, the Military Rifle and Carbine, the No. 2 Creedmoor Silhouette, and the Creedmoor Target. Calibers run from .40-65 through the .45-70 / .45-90 / .45-100 / .45-110 / .45-120 family and into .50-70 and .50-90. Shiloh also builds the 1877 Sharps Long Range — a lighter, purpose-built target action — and a 1863 Sharps in percussion.
Shiloh sits in the premium tier. The price reflects the wait, the customization, and the build quality. Buyers who order a Shiloh are typically committed to either BPCR competition, long-range black-powder target shooting, or collector-grade ownership.
C. Sharps Arms, Inc. (Big Timber, Montana)
C. Sharps Arms — founded in 1975 in Richland, Washington and relocated to Big Timber in 1980 — is the sister-town rival of Shiloh, with different ownership and different product emphasis. Like Shiloh, it builds custom-order, with similar lead times.
C. Sharps’ 1874 lineup includes the Model 1874 Hartford (pre-1875 features), the Bridgeport Sporting (post-1875 features), the Hunter’s Carbine, the 1874 Long Range & Target, the 1874 Boss Gun (a Freund & Bro. shop homage), and the 1874 Sharps Builder for customers who want to spec a receiver-up custom build.
C. Sharps also builds the 1875 Sharps — a smaller, purpose-built metallic-cartridge falling-block in calibers up to and including the formidable .50-140 Sharps Straight. The 1875 lineup includes a Sporting Rifle, a Target Rifle (with the heavy “#1” barrel for BPCR competition), a Custom build, and complete 1875 actions for custom gunsmithing. Beyond the Sharps Rifle line, C. Sharps Arms also builds 1877 Sharps, 1885 High Wall and Low Wall single-shots, and the 1879 Hepburn (a Remington pattern, included for reference because it is sometimes confused with Sharps offerings).
C. Sharps and Shiloh occupy the same market position: American-built premium custom reproductions, both with passionate followings. Choice between them often comes down to specific configuration availability, lead times in the moment, and personal preference — the rifles are functionally peers.
Cimarron Firearms (Fredericksburg, Texas)
Cimarron does not manufacture; it imports and brands rifles built by Pedersoli and Armi Sport (Chiappa). The Cimarron Sharps line is primarily Pedersoli, with some Armi Sport carbines, and it has more “named” variants — rifles tied to specific historical figures, events, or locations — than any other current distributor. For buyers who want a Sharps Rifle with a story attached, Cimarron is usually the first stop.
Billy Dixon Sharps (Pedersoli build). The Adobe Walls homage. Chambered in .45-70 with a 32-inch octagon barrel, this rifle pattern references Dixon’s June 27, 1874 shot at 1,538 yards — though Dixon’s actual borrowed rifle was a .50-90 with a 34-inch barrel. Cimarron’s Pedersoli version trades the Big Fifty chambering for the more practical .45-70 while preserving the heavy buffalo-hunter aesthetic: case-hardened receiver, double set triggers, drilled and tapped for tang sights. A reasonable choice for hunters who want the Adobe Walls style without the cost of feeding the .50-90.
Pride of the Plains (Pedersoli build). A general buffalo-hunter homage rather than a specific named-figure tribute, the Pride of the Plains is patterned after the working hide-hunter sporting rifles of the 1870s. 30-inch octagon barrel in .45-70, walnut stock, color case-hardened receiver. Where the Billy Dixon variant points at one specific shot in one specific battle, this rifle gestures at the entire era — the kind of rifle a working hunter actually carried, not the showpiece a film hero shoulders.
1874 Rifle From Down Under (Pedersoli build). The Quigley homage — pattern follows the rifle Tom Selleck carried in the 1990 film, with a 34-inch heavy octagon barrel in .45-70, .45-90, or .45-120. Hartford-collar receiver, military buttstock with no cheek rest, patchbox, and double set triggers. Cimarron’s Pedersoli build is the most accessible way to own a Quigley-pattern rifle without the multi-year lead time on a Shiloh build, though the Shiloh version remains the canonical “movie rifle.” For most shooters the Cimarron version is the practical choice.
Slotter & Co. (premium build, typically Pedersoli). The Slotter & Co. name references a 19th-century Philadelphia gunsmith firm that bought original Sharps rifles and converted them into deluxe sporting configurations — premium wood, engraving, custom sights, the high-end aftermarket finishing of its day. Cimarron’s Slotter & Co. variant honors that tradition with extensive engraving, premium-grade walnut, and an octagon-to-round barrel profile. This is the dress-up Sharps Rifle in the Cimarron catalog: a rifle to display as much as to shoot.
Armi Sport McNelly Carbine (Armi Sport build). Captain Leander McNelly led the Texas Ranger “Special Force” along the Mexican border in 1874-1876, conducting controversial cross-border raids in the post-Reconstruction lawless years. The McNelly Carbine pattern is a 22-inch round-barrel Sharps in .45-70 — short, handy, and styled for cavalry-pattern carry. The Armi Sport build is the lower-priced variant in the Cimarron lineup, paired with the McNelly name to anchor it in Texas Ranger history rather than Italian factory mass-production.
Armi Sport Billy Dixon Sharps (Armi Sport build). Same Adobe Walls reference as the Pedersoli Billy Dixon, but built by Armi Sport at a lower price point. The Armi Sport rifle is mechanically sound and visually similar; the differences are in finish detail, wood grade, and trim work. For shooters whose first concern is range performance over showroom appearance, the Armi Sport Billy Dixon is a practical choice.
The non-named variants — the 1874 Sharps Sporting Rifle and the Sharps Business Rifle — are Cimarron’s general-purpose Pedersoli builds, both in .45-70 with 32-inch octagon barrels. Solid, plain Sharps rifles for shooters who want the rifle without the historical-character attachment.
Cimarron sits in the same price band as Pedersoli direct, with the addition of Cimarron’s own stocking and finish work on the premium named variants. Strong U.S. dealer network and customer service.
Taylor’s & Company (Winchester, Virginia)
Taylor’s, like Cimarron, is an importer-distributor — rifles are built by Pedersoli and Armi Sport / Chiappa. The catalog separates into black-powder percussion (1859 Cavalry, Infantry, 1863 Cavalry, 1863 Sporting in .45 or .54) and cartridge (1874 Sporting, 1874 Down Under, 1874 Business, Sharps Carbine, and Berdan/Sniper variants with double set triggers).
Taylor’s specifies CNC-machined metal, color case-hardened receivers, hand-fit walnut, and most cartridge sporting rifles drilled and tapped at 2-1/4 inches for Creedmoor sights. Same price band as Cimarron and Pedersoli direct.
Uberti USA (Beretta Holding)
Uberti is best known for its single-action revolvers and lever-action rifles, but it also produces a 1874 Sharps Rifle line of six models, all chambered in .45-70 Government unless noted. The lineup includes the 1874 Sharps Long Range (34-inch half-octagon barrel, Creedmoor sight, globe front, double set triggers), the 1874 Sharps Down Under (34-inch octagon, Quigley homage), the 1874 Sharps Special (32-inch octagon, case-hardened), the 1874 Sharps Sporting (32-inch octagon, standard sporting), the 1874 Sharps Hunting (rear ladder sight), and the 1874 Sharps Carbine (22-inch round, A-grade walnut). All feature double set triggers.
Uberti is distributed in the U.S. through Cimarron, Taylor’s, EMF, and other importers. Build quality is consistent with the rest of Uberti’s lineup — solid mid-tier value.
Armi Sport / Chiappa (Italy) — 1874-Frame Production
Armi Sport is an Italian factory owned by the Chiappa Firearms group. It produces 1859 Infantry rifles (its three-band Sharps is well-regarded), Berdan-pattern variants, and 1874 cartridge rifles. U.S. distribution is primarily through Taylor’s and Cimarron — Armi Sport branding is rare in direct U.S. retail. Build quality varies by model and importer; the 1859 Infantry is the catalog standout among the 1874-frame production.
Chiappa Little Sharps — Small-Frame Falling-Block in Modern Cartridges
The Chiappa Little Sharps is a separate product line from the company’s 1874-frame production: a scaled-down falling-block rifle built specifically to chamber modern small-bore cartridges that the original Sharps Rifle Company never produced. The action is the Sharps-pattern vertical-falling block, but the receiver is sized for cartridges far shorter and lower-pressure than the .45-70 / .50-90 originals. Walnut stocks, color case-hardened receivers, drilled and tapped for tang sights on most variants.
Currently chambered in: .22 LR, .22 WMR (Magnum), .22 Hornet, .30-30 Winchester, .38-55 Winchester, .44-40 Winchester, and .45 Colt — and, at times, .17 HMR, which has appeared in the Little Sharps lineup intermittently rather than as a continuous catalog offering. The .30-30 chambering is reportedly less common at retail than the rimfire and pistol-caliber variants.
The Little Sharps opens the Sharps Rifle platform to shooters who want the falling-block experience without the recoil, cost, or ammunition rarity of the buffalo-cartridge originals. Use cases run from plinking and small-game hunting in .22 LR or .22 WMR, to varmint work in .22 Hornet, to cowboy action and Wild Bunch shooting in .44-40 or .45 Colt, to modern lever-cartridge deer hunting in .30-30 or .38-55. The small frame and modest recoil also make the Little Sharps a reasonable introduction to falling-block shooting for new shooters or younger family members, where the heavy octagon 1874 Sharps Rifle reproductions would be punishing.
The Little Sharps is not a historical reproduction in the strict sense — the original Sharps Rifle Company never built a rifle this small or chambered for these cartridges — but it is faithful to the falling-block action design and offers an entry point to Sharps-style shooting that the 1874 reproductions cannot match on cost, ammunition availability, or shootability. Distributed in the U.S. through Chiappa USA and select dealers including Cimarron and Taylor’s.
Navy Arms — Historical Importer, Current Catalog Reduced
Navy Arms, founded in 1956 by Val J. Forgett Sr., was for decades one of the most prominent U.S. importers of black-powder and historic-pattern reproductions, including a substantial Sharps Rifle line built primarily by Pedersoli and Armi Sport. Generations of Civil War reenactors and BPCR shooters bought their first Sharps Rifle from Navy Arms. The company’s current catalog has narrowed considerably — at the time of this writing, Navy Arms lists only three firearms (the FRF2 Sniper Rifle, the MAC 50 Pistol, and the #4 Mark 1 Enfield) and no Sharps reproductions. Buyers seeking a Navy Arms-marked Sharps Rifle will find them on the secondary market through gun shows, GunBroker, and dealers specializing in used black-powder rifles. The rifles themselves are typically Pedersoli or Armi Sport builds and are mechanically equivalent to current production from those factories.
IAB / Pedretti — Status Caveat
Industria Armi Bresciane (IAB), a Marcheno, Italy factory currently owned by Adriano Pedretti, has historically built Sharps Rifle reproductions but the current production status is unclear. Parts remain available through specialist suppliers. For practical buyer’s purposes, treat IAB as a parts and used-market source rather than a current new-rifle option.
Choosing Your Sharps Rifle: A Use-Case Framework
The reproductions market is large enough that it helps to start with the use case and work backward to the rifle.
Cowboy Action Shooting. A 22-inch round-barrel Cavalry Carbine in .45-70, or a 32-inch octagon Sporting in .45-70, both work well. The CMSA / SASS rule sets accommodate Sharps single-shots in side matches and long-range events. Pedersoli, Cimarron, Uberti, and Taylor’s are all reasonable choices in the mid-tier band.
BPCR Silhouette Competition. This is the discipline where Sharps rifles dominate matches. A 30 to 34-inch octagon barrel in .40-65 or .45-70, with a Vernier tang Soule sight and a globe front, is the canonical configuration. Premium-tier — Shiloh’s No. 2 Creedmoor Silhouette or No. 3 Sporter, or C. Sharps Arms’ 1875 Target Rifle. Pedersoli’s Silhouette and Silhouette LX are the mid-tier options that produce competitive scores in the right hands.
Long-Range / Creedmoor Target. A 34-inch heavy octagon in .45-90 or .45-110, with a Long Range Soule rear and globe front. Shiloh Long Range Express, C. Sharps Arms 1874 Long Range & Target, or Pedersoli 1877 Overbough Long Range. The premium tier is the right band for serious long-range work because the rifles are tuned to the cartridge’s potential.
Recreational Buffalo Hunting / Big-Bore Hunting. A 30-inch octagon in .45-70, .45-90, or one of the Big Fifty cartridges. Shiloh Quigley, C. Sharps Arms Bridgeport Sporting, Pedersoli 1874 Buffalo. The Big Fifty rounds — .50-90, .50-110, .50-140 — are romance more than necessity for most modern hunting; .45-70 will take any North American game cleanly with proper bullet selection.
Living-History / Civil War Reenactment. A percussion 1859 or 1863 in .54, with the appropriate stock pattern (Cavalry, Infantry, or Berdan). Pedersoli, Taylor’s, and Cimarron all carry the percussion variants. Skip the cartridge models entirely — they’re anachronistic for any pre-1865 setting.
Collector / Investment. Shiloh No. 1 Sporter or C. Sharps Arms Hartford with extensive customization. The American custom builders hold value better than the Italian reproductions, and the lead time itself is part of the ownership experience.
Plinking / Small-Game / Modern-Cartridge Falling-Block. A Chiappa Little Sharps in .22 LR or .22 WMR for plinking and small-game; .22 Hornet for varmint work; .30-30 Winchester or .38-55 Winchester for deer-class hunting; .44-40 Winchester or .45 Colt for cowboy action shooting at lower cost than the 1874 chamberings. The Little Sharps is the only currently-produced rifle that lets a shooter experience the Sharps falling-block action in modern small-bore cartridges, and it is the most accessible Sharps-pattern rifle on cost, recoil, and ammunition availability.
The Quigley Match and Modern Sharps Rifle Competitions
The 1990 Tom Selleck film Quigley Down Under did more for the Sharps reproductions market than any other single event in the platform’s modern history. The most direct evidence is the Matthew Quigley Buffalo Rifle Match, founded in 1991 by Al Lee and Earnie Cornett of the Forsyth Rifle and Pistol Club in Forsyth, Montana. By the 2024 event — the 31st annual — the match was drawing more than 600 shooters from across the United States and abroad, making it the largest BPCR-style match in the country.
The Quigley Match course of fire is 48 shots total: 8 shots each at 6 steel targets ranging from a 350-yard “bucket” (shot offhand) to an 805-yard steel buffalo silhouette. Targets between those endpoints are shot from the sitting position with the rifle resting on cross-sticks — the period buffalo-hunter shooting technique. Categories include Junior, Senior, “White Buffalo” for shooters over 72, and “Small Fry” for shooters under 9. The match runs over a two-day weekend each June. It is not NRA-sanctioned; it operates as an independent club match, and that informality is part of its identity.
Beyond Quigley, the formal NRA Black Powder Cartridge Rifle (BPCR) Silhouette discipline is the largest competitive home for Sharps Rifles. The sport was formalized in 1985 at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico, with the first National Championship instituted in 1987. The course of fire shoots steel silhouettes at four distances — chickens at 200 meters, pigs at 300, turkeys at 385, and rams at 500 — for a 60-shot two-day national event. Equipment rules require a black-powder or Pyrodex propellant, lead-alloy bullets without gas checks, cartridge and rifle designs predating 1895 (replicas allowed), a 12 lb 2 oz weight limit, and an exposed hammer. NRA also sanctions a parallel scoped division. The 2025 National Championship was held August 15-22 at the NMLRA range in Friendship, Indiana.
The Long-Range BPCR / Creedmoor revival operates as a separate annual cycle of matches at 800, 900, and 1,000 yards — the original 1874 Creedmoor format. The NRA Whittington Center hosts the highest-profile annual event. In October 2024, the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association celebrated the 150th anniversary of the original 1874 Creedmoor International Match.
The competition infrastructure is what keeps the Sharps Rifle reproductions market viable beyond collecting and recreational shooting. A Pedersoli, Shiloh, or C. Sharps Arms 1874 reproduction bought today can compete in nationally-sanctioned matches against thousand-shooter fields — that is the kind of living competitive context that no other 19th-century American rifle platform retains.
What to Look For When Buying a Sharps Rifle
A few specific points reward attention before purchase.
Action verification. The Sharps Rifle is a falling-block action — the breech block drops vertically when the lever is operated. It is not a rolling block (Remington pattern) or a trapdoor (Springfield pattern). Reproduction marketing copy occasionally says “sliding breech,” which is loose period language for the same vertical-drop mechanism, but a true Sharps Rifle action drops, it does not slide horizontally.
Sight options. Open buckhorn rear and blade front are standard on cowboy-action and hunting variants. For target work, look for tang aperture sights — Soule (premium), Vernier tang (generic micrometer), or Creedmoor (the specific 19th-century Long Range Soule pattern with windage adjustment). Globe front sights with interchangeable inserts (post, bead, aperture) pair with the tang rear for serious target work. Many sporting-grade reproductions are drilled and tapped for tang sights even when they ship with open sights — verify before purchase if you plan to add target sights later.
Stock pattern. Military buttstock means straight comb, no cheek rest, no pistol grip — correct for Quigley, Hartford, and military-pattern reproductions. Shotgun butt means a fitted shotgun-style steel buttplate, often paired with cheek rest and pistol grip — correct for Sporting, Long Range Express, and target variants. Patchbox is a hinged door in the buttstock for caps and patches, retained on 1859 percussion and Berdan variants.
Barrel profile and length. Octagon barrels are the right look for sporting, target, and buffalo-hunting variants. Round barrels with bands are correct for military Cavalry and Infantry models. Length runs from 22 inches on carbines to 34 inches on the heaviest long-range and buffalo rifles.
Caliber by use, not romance. The Big Fifty cartridges are exciting but expensive to feed and produce stiff recoil from any reasonable rifle weight. For most modern shooters, .45-70 covers cowboy action, BPCR silhouette, and most hunting. .40-65 is the silhouette-competition shooter’s caliber when the goal is repeated steel hits at distance. .45-90 and .45-110 are long-range Creedmoor calibers. The Big Fifty rounds — .50-90, .50-110, .50-140 — are for buffalo-hunter recreation and the romance of the round, and they’re a reasonable choice if that’s the use case.
Practical Ballistics: What Sharps Rifles Actually Do
Sharps Rifles are black-powder cartridges, with the practical implications that follow. Muzzle velocities for typical full-power black-powder loads run from roughly 1,200 to 1,400 feet per second across the family — substantially slower than smokeless cartridges in similar bores. What black-powder loadings give up in velocity, they make up in projectile mass: .45-70 with 405-grain bullets, .45-110 with 535 to 550 grains, .50-90 with 473 to 500 grains, .50-140 Straight with 700 grains. Energy comes from mass, not speed.
| Cartridge | Bullet weight (typical) | Muzzle velocity (BP load) | Muzzle energy | Practical range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .45-70 Government | 405 gr | ~1,200 fps | ~1,300 ft-lbs | 300-400 yds |
| .45-90 Sharps | 500 gr | ~1,300 fps | ~1,900 ft-lbs | 500-600 yds |
| .45-110 Sharps | 535-550 gr | ~1,350 fps | ~2,200 ft-lbs | 800-1,000 yds |
| .45-120 Sharps | 550 gr | ~1,400 fps | ~2,400 ft-lbs | 1,000+ yds |
| .50-70 Government | 450 gr | ~1,250 fps | ~1,560 ft-lbs | 300-400 yds |
| .50-90 Sharps | 473 gr | ~1,300 fps | ~1,775 ft-lbs | 500-600 yds |
| .50-110 Sharps | 600 gr | ~1,350 fps | ~2,425 ft-lbs | 600-700 yds |
| .50-140 Sharps Straight | 700 gr | ~1,350 fps | ~2,840 ft-lbs | 700-800 yds |
| .40-65 Sharps | 380 gr | ~1,300 fps | ~1,425 ft-lbs | 500-600 yds |
| .40-90 Sharps | 400 gr | ~1,400 fps | ~1,740 ft-lbs | 600-800 yds |
Numbers above are approximations for typical full-power black-powder loadings. Actual performance varies by powder grade, charge weight, bullet type (cast vs. paper-patched), barrel length, and rifle condition. Modern smokeless-substitute powders (Pyrodex, Triple Seven) produce similar but distinguishable velocity profiles; for historically accurate Sharps Rifle performance, use real black powder.
The practical implications: Sharps cartridges produce substantial muzzle energy — 1,300 to 2,800+ ft-lbs depending on chambering — with heavy, slow-moving projectiles that arc significantly and require deliberate hold-over at distance. This is what 19th-century long-range shooting actually was: read the target, calculate the arc, hold the appropriate amount over. A modern flat-shooting smokeless cartridge does this work for the shooter; a black-powder Sharps demands the shooter do it.
Effective range for hunting depends on the shooter, the game, and the cartridge more than on any one factor. The .45-70 Government will cleanly take any North American game out to roughly 300 yards in capable hands; .45-90 and .45-110 push effective range to 500 yards or beyond on deer-class and larger game. Buffalo hunters in the 1870s routinely connected at 400 to 600 yards because they had the time, the rest, and the unhurried pace to read wind, calculate trajectory, and hold accordingly.
For modern target work: BPCR Silhouette competition shoots from 200 meters (chickens) through 385 meters (turkeys) and 500 meters (rams). Long-range BPCR matches shoot from 800 to 1,000 yards at large steel or paper targets. The cartridge selections for these disciplines are well-established by competition results: .40-65 for silhouette in capable hands, .45-70 as the workhorse, .45-90 / .45-100 / .45-110 for the longest matches where the heavier bullets buck wind better at extended range.
Modern Ammunition and Reloading
Most serious Sharps Rifle shooters reload. For the most common chamberings (.45-70, .45-90, .45-110, .50-70, .50-90), factory-loaded ammunition is available from black-powder specialists including Buffalo Arms Company, Black Hills Ammunition, BACO (Black Powder Ammunition Co.), and Hornady’s Cowboy line — but factory loads typically run lighter than period full-power black-powder loadings. Serious shooters reload to control bullet weight, powder charge, case length, and lubricant — all of which materially affect long-range accuracy.
Brass. Starline, Bertram (Australia), and Buffalo Arms produce most of the active Sharps caliber lineup. The rarer chamberings (.50-100, .50-140 Straight, .40-50 Bottleneck, the .44 family) are typically formed from parent brass — .50 BMG, .45-120, or .348 Winchester reduced and re-formed depending on the target case.
Bullets. Cast lead bullets in 380 to 700 grain weights cover the Sharps Rifle family. Cast molds are available from Lyman (the legacy reference), Lee Precision (budget), and specialty makers including Steve Brooks, Mountain Molds, Accurate Molds, and NEI Handtools. Paper-patched bullets — historically authentic and accuracy-critical for serious long-range work — are available custom-cast from specialists or as patched-and-ready-to-load from BACO, Buffalo Arms, and Montana Bullet Works.
Powder. Real black powder is the reference standard. Goex Cartridge Grade, Olde Eynsford, and Swiss are the major modern producers, available in FFg (coarse, for larger Sharps Rifle calibers) and FFFg (medium, for the smaller .40 family). Smokeless substitutes (Pyrodex, Triple Seven, BlackMZ) work in modern reproduction Sharps but produce slightly different velocity and pressure profiles than real black powder. For sanctioned BPCR competition, real black powder is required by rule.
Wads. Vegetable fiber, wool felt, and lubricated card wads are placed between the powder column and the bullet to ensure complete combustion, prevent leading, and standardize ignition. Walters Wads, Buffalo Arms, and Circle Fly Wads are the common suppliers.
Lubricants. Black-powder bullet lubricant — typically a beeswax-and-tallow base, often augmented with Crisco or proprietary formulations like SPG (Sharpshooter Powder Grease) and BAC — is essential. Cast bullets shot without proper lubricant will lead the barrel quickly and accuracy will collapse within a session.
Cleaning. Black-powder fouling is corrosive and water-soluble. Standard practice is to swab the barrel with hot water immediately after shooting, dry thoroughly, then oil. A Sharps Rifle cleaned the same day will be ready to fire again; one neglected for a week may need professional rust remediation. This is the discipline price of black-powder shooting — not an inconvenience to skip.
Sights. The factory open sights on most Sharps Rifle reproductions are adequate for cowboy action and short-range hunting. For target work and serious long-range shooting, replace the rear with a Vernier tang aperture and the front with a globe-and-insert assembly. Lyman tang sights, MVA (Montana Vintage Arms) Soule sights, and Hi-Lux Optics’ Buffalo William long-range sight are the common upgrades. Most Sharps Rifle reproductions ship drilled and tapped at 2-1/4 inches for tang sight installation.
The Sharps Cartridge Arc: Paper to Metallic
When Christian Sharps received his patent in 1848, the falling-block mechanism was designed around paper cartridges — self-contained packets of black powder and projectile, wrapped in paper, ignited externally by a percussion cap. By the time the Sharps Rifle Company collapsed in 1881, the same falling-block action was firing self-contained centerfire metallic cartridges in calibers from .40 to .50, with bottleneck and straight-walled cases pulled from a catalog more diverse than any other 19th-century American rifle. The arc from paper to metallic — and especially the conversion era that bridged them — is the technical history of the Sharps Rifle platform.
Paper and Linen Cartridges (1849-1865)
The original Sharps cartridge was paper, hand-loaded with black powder and a ball, twisted at the rear and sometimes pre-lubricated with tallow or beeswax. Loading was a one-handed motion: drop the lever, insert the cartridge into the chamber, raise the lever, and place a percussion cap on the cone. The rising breech block sheared the rear of the paper cartridge to expose the powder for the percussion cap’s spark. A trained shooter could fire eight to ten rounds per minute — three to four times the rate of a muzzle-loading musket of the same era.
By the 1850s, linen cartridges began to replace paper in many Sharps applications. Linen was more durable in the field, more weather-resistant, and — when treated with potassium nitrate to ensure complete combustion — more reliable in damp conditions. The Sharps Rifles issued to Berdan’s Sharpshooter Regiment in 1862 used linen cartridges as standard.
Maynard Tape, Percussion Cap, and the Ignition Question
Some Sharps military models incorporated the Maynard tape primer — a roll of paper-and-fulminate caps fed automatically as the hammer was cocked. Maynard primers were intended to speed loading by eliminating the need to handle individual percussion caps, but the tape was finicky in damp conditions and prone to mis-feeding. By the early 1860s, most Civil War field troops ignored the Maynard system and used standard #11 percussion caps placed individually on the cone. The 1859 and 1863 Sharps Rifles that fought the Civil War most often used percussion caps despite some models retaining the Maynard hardware on the lock.
The Conversion Era (1867-1875)
The Civil War left the U.S. Army with a vast surplus of percussion-era weapons that were obsolete in the era of metallic cartridges. Roughly 80,000 Sharps cavalry carbines and 11,000 infantry rifles were sitting in arsenals — mechanically sound but firing technology that had been overtaken in less than a decade. The Army’s solution was to convert them rather than scrap them.
The first conversions, beginning around 1867, were chambered for the .56-50 Spencer rimfire cartridge — a transitional choice driven by the Spencer’s existing supply chain in U.S. service. The major conversion program followed shortly after: re-chambering Sharps rifles and carbines for the new .50-70 Government centerfire cartridge that the Army had adopted as its standard rifle round. The Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company itself performed many of these conversions under government contract, replacing percussion breech blocks with metallic-cartridge breech blocks and re-cutting the chamber to centerfire dimensions. The original percussion lock and external hammer were retained — the conversion was strictly to the breech block, chamber, and extractor.
The result was the “Sharps Conversion” — a percussion-frame rifle with metallic-cartridge mechanics. These rifles served through the early Indian Wars, equipped reservation police forces and frontier cavalry, and remained in front-line service into the early 1870s. When the Army adopted the .45-70 Government in 1873, some Sharps were further re-chambered, though the .45-70 conversions are less common than the .50-70 conversions.
The conversion era extended beyond the military. Civilian Sharps owners — buffalo hunters, frontiersmen, target shooters, and Civil War veterans who had kept their issued or purchased rifles — paid the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company or independent gunsmiths to convert their personal rifles to metallic cartridges. By the early 1870s, original percussion Sharps were rapidly being phased out in favor of either converted rifles or the new purpose-built metallic-cartridge rifles like the Model 1869 and Model 1874.
For collectors today, conversion Sharps form a distinct category: percussion-frame rifles with metallic-cartridge mechanics, historically significant as the bridge between Civil War paper-cartridge Sharps and buffalo-hunter Big Fifty Sharps. They are rarely reproduced by modern makers — current reproductions are either full percussion 1859/1863 patterns or full metallic 1874 patterns, not the transitional conversion frames. Original conversions are valued by collectors for their place in the technical history; mechanically they are less robust than purpose-built metallic-cartridge Sharps because the conversion retained the percussion frame’s pressure profile, which limits safe loadings.
Native Metallic Cartridge (1869-1881)
The Model 1869 was the first Sharps Rifle designed from the start to fire self-contained metallic cartridges. The Model 1874 — production-launched in 1871 but marketed under the 1874 designation that stuck — carried this forward and became the canonical metallic-cartridge Sharps Rifle. The .50-70 Government and .45-70 Government were the most common military and hunting chamberings, but the Sharps Rifle Company developed an extensive proprietary cartridge catalog alongside the Government rounds. Bottleneck rounds emerged for target shooting (.40-50 Sharps Bottleneck, .44-77 Sharps & Remington); straight-walled hunting and long-range cartridges followed (.45-90, .45-100, .45-110, .45-120); and the Big Fifty buffalo cartridges defined the rifle’s commercial peak (.50-90 Sharps in 1872, then .50-100, .50-110, and finally the .50-140 Sharps Straight in the late 1870s).
End of the Line
When the Sharps Rifle Company collapsed in 1881, smokeless powder was just emerging from European laboratories. The Sharps Rifle platform was never updated for smokeless cartridges in its original commercial life — the company’s last innovation, the Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878, was still a black-powder rifle. Modern reproductions today fire black-powder loadings or low-pressure modern equivalents, preserving the cartridge profile of the era. This is part of why the modern reproduction market is dominated by a single rifle pattern — the 1874 — and a small family of historically authentic cartridges, rather than continuous evolution toward modern smokeless rounds.
The Sharps Cartridge Family
Few American rifles in history have used a wider variety of cartridges than the Sharps Rifle. Across the rifle’s commercial lifetime — and the modern reproduction era that followed — Sharps rifles have fired everything from the paper-cartridge .52 caliber of Berdan’s Civil War sharpshooters to the .50-140 Sharps Straight that emerged near the end of the buffalo era. Some of these rounds were Sharps proprietary; others were government cartridges adopted by the Sharps Rifle platform; a few are modern revivals chambered specifically for reproduction rifles. The list below is comprehensive but not exhaustive — minor variants, factory-load oddities, and one-off contract rounds are folded into the families they most resemble.
Percussion paper / linen cartridges (1850s-1860s). The pre-metallic Sharps rifles fired self-contained paper or linen cartridges, with the rising breech block shearing the rear of the cartridge to expose the powder for ignition by an external percussion cap or Maynard tape primer.
| Cartridge | Era | Use |
|---|---|---|
| .52 caliber paper | 1859, 1863 military | Berdan’s Sharpshooters; Civil War issue |
| .54 caliber paper | 1859, 1863 sporting | Civilian and reenactment |
| .45 caliber paper | 1863 percussion sporting | Civilian sporting (Pedersoli reproduction) |
Government cartridges adopted by Sharps. After the Civil War, the U.S. military shifted to metallic cartridges. Sharps rifles were converted (1867 onward) and built fresh to fire the standard Government rounds, which became among the most common Sharps chamberings in actual hide-hunter use.
| Cartridge | Year | Use |
|---|---|---|
| .50-70 Government | 1866 | Post-war military, early buffalo-era hunting |
| .45-70 Government | 1873 | Workhorse cartridge across hunting, target, military; the most common Sharps chambering then and now |
.40-caliber Sharps cartridges. The .40-caliber family was developed primarily for target shooting, where reduced recoil and flatter trajectories at mid-range mattered more than terminal energy. Several variants were developed with both straight-walled and bottleneck cases.
| Cartridge | Case profile | Primary use |
|---|---|---|
| .40-50 Sharps Bottleneck | Bottleneck | Target / mid-range |
| .40-50 Sharps Straight | Straight | Target / mid-range |
| .40-65 Sharps Straight | Straight | Target / BPCR silhouette (still popular today) |
| .40-70 Sharps Bottleneck | Bottleneck | Long-range target |
| .40-70 Sharps Straight | Straight | Long-range target |
| .40-90 Sharps Bottleneck | Bottleneck | Creedmoor target |
| .40-90 Sharps Straight | Straight | Creedmoor target |
.44-caliber Sharps cartridges. The .44 family bridges between .40-caliber target rounds and the heavier .45-caliber sporting cartridges. Most .44 Sharps cartridges were bottlenecked, holding more powder in a smaller-diameter case.
| Cartridge | Case profile | Primary use |
|---|---|---|
| .44-77 Sharps & Remington | Bottleneck | Sporting / target; shared with Remington rolling-block |
| .44-90 Sharps Bottleneck (Necked) | Bottleneck | Long-range target |
| .44-90 Sharps Straight | Straight | Long-range target |
| .44-100 Sharps “Big Forty-four” | Straight | Buffalo-hunting |
.45-caliber Sharps cartridges. The .45 family is where modern reproduction shooters spend most of their time. .45-70 Government dominates by volume, but the long-range Sharps proprietary cartridges (.45-90, .45-100, .45-110, .45-120, .45-125) define the BPCR Creedmoor and long-range competition disciplines.
| Cartridge | Case length | Primary use |
|---|---|---|
| .45-70 Government | 2.10″ | Workhorse hunting / cowboy / BPCR silhouette |
| .45-90 Sharps Straight | 2.40″ | Long-range hunting and target |
| .45-100 Sharps Straight | 2.60″ | Long-range Creedmoor target |
| .45-110 Sharps Straight | 2.875″ | Long-range Creedmoor target; Quigley’s chambering |
| .45-120 Sharps Straight (3-1/4″) | 3.25″ | Premium long-range; heavy recoil |
| .45-125 Sharps Straight (3-1/2″) | 3.50″ | Rare; specialty long-range |
.50-caliber Sharps cartridges — the “Big Fifty” family. The .50-caliber Sharps cartridges are the romance rounds of buffalo-hunter literature. They were used in real hide-hunting, but the .45-70 and .50-70 did the volume work. The Big Fifty rounds were for the longest shots and the heaviest game.
| Cartridge | Year introduced | Primary use |
|---|---|---|
| .50-70 Sharps Straight | 1866 (as .50-70 Gov’t) | Post-war hunting workhorse |
| .50-90 Sharps Straight | 1872 | The original “Big Fifty”; Billy Dixon’s Adobe Walls cartridge |
| .50-100 Sharps Straight | early 1870s | Buffalo-hunting |
| .50-110 Sharps Straight | early 1870s | Long-range buffalo-hunting |
| .50-140 Sharps Straight (3-1/4″) | late 1870s | Latest and largest Sharps cartridge; rare in original use |
Modern availability. Of the cartridges above, .45-70 Government, .45-90, .45-110, .50-70, and .50-90 are readily available as both factory-loaded ammunition and reloading components. The .40-65, .40-70 Straight, .45-100, and .45-120 are available primarily as reloading components (cases from Starline, Bertram, or Buffalo Arms; bullets from Lyman, Lee, or specialty cast-bullet makers). The remainder — particularly the bottleneck variants and the largest Big Fifty rounds — are reloading-only and often require custom cases formed from parent brass. Most serious Sharps Rifle shooters reload, both for cost control and for the precision tuning the platform rewards.
Modern small-bore cartridges (Chiappa Little Sharps). The original Sharps Rifle Company never chambered any of the cartridges below; they exist in the Sharps Rifle platform only because the modern Chiappa Little Sharps was designed around them. They are modern cartridges in a Sharps-pattern action, useful to a different shooter than the 1874-frame buyer.
| Cartridge | Primary use |
|---|---|
| .22 LR | Plinking, small-game, target |
| .22 WMR (Magnum) | Small-game, varmint |
| .17 HMR | Varmint (offered in the past) |
| .22 Hornet | Varmint |
| .30-30 Winchester | Modern deer-class hunting |
| .38-55 Winchester | Cowboy Action, modern hunting |
| .44-40 Winchester | Cowboy Action |
| .45 Colt | Cowboy Action, Wild Bunch |
Recommended Reading on the Sharps Rifle
The Sharps Rifle reference literature is deep enough that a serious owner can build a worthwhile shelf without much effort. Three works in particular are canonical.
The Marcot multi-volume series (Volume I, The Percussion Era; Volume II, Early Metallic Cartridge Firearms and Model 1874 Sporting Rifles; Volume III, Model 1874, 1875 & 1877 Target Rifles and Model Variations; Volume IV, Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878) is the current canonical reference, endorsed by both the American Society of Arms Collectors and the Sharps Collector Association. Roy Marcot, Ron Paxton, and the co-authors have produced the Sharps reference work that supersedes everything that came before.
Frank Sellers’ Sharps Firearms (1982) was the foundational single-volume reference for forty years and remains widely cited. The book is out of print but commonly available used, and its photography and serial-number documentation continue to support collector and historical work.
Martin Rywell’s Sharps Rifle: The Gun That Shaped American Destiny (1957) is the entry-level / gift-grade reference — romanticized history, period catalog reproductions, 160 pages of accessible narrative. Not authoritative for technical detail, but a fair starting point and still in print through Shiloh Rifle Co. and Track of the Wolf.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Sharps Rifle reproductions legal to buy? Yes. Modern centerfire reproductions are FFL-handled like any other modern centerfire rifle. Percussion variants — the 1859 and 1863 in .54 — are in many states classified as antique/replica and may not require an FFL transfer. Confirm with your state’s regulations.
Do Sharps Rifle reproductions shoot original ammunition? They shoot modern equivalents of the original chamberings. The .45-70 Government, .45-90, .45-110, .50-70, and .50-90 are all available as reloading components, and a few of the more common chamberings (.45-70 in particular) are available as factory-loaded ammunition. Most serious Sharps shooters reload, both for cost and for control over bullet weight, powder charge, and case length.
Pedersoli versus Shiloh — which is better? Different propositions. Pedersoli is mid-tier, available, with strong international support and good build quality. Shiloh is American premium custom, with parts that interchange with original Sharps Rifles, lead times of one to three years or longer, and prices that reflect that. A serious BPCR competitor or long-range target shooter often ends up with both — a Pedersoli for daily practice and a Shiloh for the matches where the rifle’s full potential matters.
Is “sharpshooter” actually from “Sharps”? No. The term predates the Sharps rifle by about half a century, calqued from German Scharfschütze. Berdan’s Sharpshooter Regiment used Sharps rifles, and the coincidence of name and function reinforced the term in American military vernacular — but the word existed first.
What rifle did Quigley actually shoot? A Shiloh 1874 Hartford-pattern No. 3 Sporting with an 1863 patchbox, 34-inch barrel, .45-110. Built specifically for the 1990 production by Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Company. The film is fiction, but the rifle is an accurate Shiloh build.
Is the original Sharps Rifle Company still in business? No. Sharps Rifle Company was dissolved in 1881. The “Sharps” name on modern rifles is used by C. Sharps Arms, Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing, and the various Italian reproduction makers — separate companies under separate ownership, building rifles in tribute to the original designs.
What’s the difference between the 1874 and the 1875? The 1874 is the canonical Sharps cartridge rifle, descended directly from the percussion 1863. The 1875 is a smaller, lighter falling-block action purpose-built for metallic cartridges, designed late in the company’s life and not produced in large numbers historically. Modern C. Sharps Arms builds the 1875 as a target-grade rifle in calibers up to .50-140 Sharps Straight.
What about the Sharps-Borchardt 1878? Hugo Borchardt’s hammerless single-shot, designed for the Sharps Rifle Company near the end of its life. Only 8,700 made before the 1881 bankruptcy. Original examples are collector items; modern reproductions are rare. Borchardt himself went on to design the C-93 semi-automatic pistol that became the ancestor of the Luger.
The Sharps as a Living Rifle
The Sharps Rifle Company died in 1881. The rifle did not. Today seven manufacturers and importers — two American custom builders, three Italian factories, and several U.S. distributors — keep the falling-block design alive in configurations that span cowboy action shooting, BPCR silhouette competition, long-range black-powder target work, recreational buffalo hunting, and Civil War reenactment. The rifle that was once defined by Berdan’s Sharpshooters and the buffalo plains is now defined as much by its modern users — competitors at Quigley Shooters Society matches, hunters working long-distance high-plains pronghorn, reenactors firing ten-thousand-round weekends — as by the men who carried it the first time around.
Christian Sharps left the company that bore his name within a few years of its founding. He never operated the Hartford floor that built the rifles his patent made possible. He died the year the Model 1874 reached its peak. But the rifle outlasted him, outlasted the company, outlasted the buffalo herds, and outlasted the era that made it famous. It is one of the few American firearms whose modern reproductions are substantively the same rifle as the one that fought at Gettysburg and Adobe Walls, available to any shooter today who wants to experience the action and the cartridges as they were originally fielded.
The buyer’s framework above will get you to the right model for your use case. The history is what makes the choice mean something.
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