Carl,
I can sympathsize with your delimma. My first reproduction Sharps was purchased through Dixie Gun Works (Christmas 1992 'present to myself'). Initially, I asked DGW if they had enough original parts in stock that I could convert my original NM 1863 carbine into a NM 1859 rifle. They had never heard of anybody doing that before and after calculating the cost of the parts they did have in stock, I decided to buy the repo instead. Building a Sharps rifle from scratch was too expensive.
The Pederosoli/DGW rifle was a .54 percussion civilan model; the barrel was only 28 inch barrel (2 inches shorter than the military model), it featured a checkered forestock (no barrel bands) and wrist grips, forestock was screwed to the barrel, and no patchbox either.
The DGW folks hadn't heard of anybody adding original parts to a Ped, but with confidence in my Yankee tinkering skills, I purchased an original lockplate, original screws, and most of the Lawrence pellet primer parts. I quickly found out that the metric Ped would not accept the original lockplate or other parts. I put them in my armors box for future use.
I loaded up some cartridges and took my new rifle out to shoot at the local range. Dropped the block, slid the cartridge inside and closed the block, cap on the cone and aimed. After nearly 20 years of waiting I lined up the rear/front sights and squeezed the trigger--pop. I spent the next 1 hour scratching my head trying to figure out how to get the gun to shoot. I concluded that the # 11 caps were simply too underpowered to ignite the powder charge. They work fine with Colt/Remington pistols-but not a Sharps.
I called Dixie and I first learned of the infamous 'drill out the cone (nipple) vent' recommnendation. Visited my uncle's basement machine shop and we enlarged the vent, cleaned out the block, etc. Another day at the range and the rifle continued to impotently 'pop'. I sent the block back to them where the drilled and retapped to accept a musket cone (nipple). I tried firing the reconfigured weapon with no more success. Dixie let me return the rifle and refunded my money.
When I fell in with Co. B. at Fairfield event (1995) I discovered John Carey toting a civilian Sharps rifle that had been reconfigured with the correct forestock and barrel bands, but retained the checkering. I can't say for certain, but I suspect Dave Fulcher may have had a hand of converting it-since he was the Company armorer. From what I was told, Co. B. was one of the first groups to get the Pederosoli Sharps military/Berdan contract rifles. Dave informed me that it took nearly two years before they were able to work all the kinks out of the rifles so they would function consistently on the 'battlefield'.
I purchased my Berdan contract NM1859 through Navy Arms (another importer of Davide Pedersoli firearms) in December 1994. Sold it to Chad Fuller (of the Randolf Mess) in 2005. I now carry a Farmingdale Shiloh NM159 military model (single trigger). I remove the trigger guard latch to make the rifle look similar in apparence to the Berdan contract model.
Bill Skillman Randolf Mess-USSS
|