Originally Posted by
THerbert
I have one that my wife gave me for a birthday present last year, and I shot it for the first time a couple of months ago. I made paper cartridges for it on the ringtail boolets I got from TotW. When I say shot it, I'm being generous. It only went off three or four times, each time it took 4-5 caps to get the charge to ignite. I brought it home and cleaned it thoroughly, including cleaning out the flash passages in the breech block with appropriate-sized drill bits, to make sure everything is clear, no carbon fouling or anything like that, left over from the prior owner. I also had to replace the nipple, as it looked like most of the firing that the prior owner had done with it was dry firing, and the top of the original nipple was completely rounded over. So, now I need to try it again.
I wish you luck with yours, and I hope to have better luck with mine, as I really love Sharps rifles, and I would like to be able to shoot mine on a regular basis. But as one of the earlier posters had mentioned, it's really not a long-range rifle, as that really is a short, fat bullet. Now, you say that you got a mould with yours -- if it's for the Pedersoli bullet, rather than the "Christmas tree" bullet, that might shoot better at longer ranges, but I haven't acquired one of those moulds yet, and won't, unless I can get it to go off on a regular basis!