.50-70 Sharps

[VintovkaMosin]

So at the antique shop my father owns, a man came in and he said he wanted to bring in a Sharps rifle in .50-70 and he said it had a 3-groove bore and that it fired just fine. He called me up (I live 3-4 hours away) and wanted me to ask about ammo availability, and he also wants me to drive down and check it out when the man comes back next week. Are these conversions rare or worth the time.

 

[Jim Watson]

Rare?
Well, according to Blue Book, Sharps converted 31,000 carbines and 1000 rifles from percussion to .50-70 cartridge in 1867; and Springfield Armory did 1000 more rifles and 300 carbines in 1870, and I am sure a lot of them were worn out or lost. Book value is considerable, but I don't know what they are actually selling for, see below.

The three groove barrel shows that the original six groove percussion barrel was larger than .5225" and was relined to the same specs as the Trapdoor Springfield.

There were many fewer rifles than carbines converted but Blue Book says that does not make them worth much more. I don't know about THAT. It will be interesting to see what the guy brings in.

Worth the time for what?
Buy low, sell high?
Check your market, there are two going begging in the $1000-$1200 range on GunBroker, which is way under blue book numbers.
Shoot?
Ammunition is available but expensive. Handloading is like any other BPCR which is a more involved process than cranking out a few .223s for your tackytickle asssault riffle.
A friend has a carbine, it is about Minute of Apache accurate with a good stout kick to let you know you have fired a serious weapon.

 

[VintovkaMosin]

My father is a big fan of the large caliber rifles. He has a Vetterli in the process of centrefire conversion. When i said 'worth the time" he is an avid shooter and meaning are they worth the time of reloading and such.

Whats a good alternative to using blackpowder? He dislikes pyrodex, but is there something that acts more like a smokeless powder, in terms of cleaning?

Is there a case that can be resized or fireformed to .50-70?

 

[Onmilo]

IMR 4759 is an excellent smokeless alternative for blackpowder rifles as long as the weapon has been checked out by a knowledgable gunsmith and given the A-OK for shooting.
http://www.imrpowder.com/sr4759.html
Huntington Die Specialties usually has .50/70 brass cases on hand.
http://www.huntingtons.com/store/product.php?productid=17385&cat=276&page=2
They will have bullet casting & reloading stuff too. HTH

 

[Jim Watson]

Real black powder is less corrosive than Pyrodex and not nearly as much trouble to clean up after as you might think. I take 10-15 minutes at the range and then reclean at home to be sure. Less trouble than trying to get the copper out of my .308.
Of course you have to wash your brass.

I have no experience loading fake powders or nitro in black powder calibers. My .38-55 hasn't smelled smokeless in 15 years and my .40-65 never since I bought it.

 

[Onmilo]

SR4759 was a powder originally produced for loading in black powder based cartridges.
The pressures are quite low and the powder is bulky to fill up larger cases for more reliable burn.
If you haven't tried it, I recommend giving it a whirl.
I pretty well gave up on black powder loading when the stuff became all but impossible to obtain in my area and the SR 4759 is more economical to load not to mention much easier to clean up after.