Accuracy of Sharps .54 rifles?

[koger]

This may need to go to the ML forum, but since it is a Single shot sharps, I figured you gents would know. I have had 3 of these, imported by Navy Arms and Sile, some years ago, and all were in pristine shape. Back when I shot black powder cartridge rifle matches, I was having phenomenal accuracy out of a C. Sharps an a Remington Rolling block. It follows, that the .54 Sharps would be accurate, as the legendary shooters were in the civil war. I could never get suitable groups, no matter what powder, bullet, lube I used. Most of the cartridge guys in my neck of the woods, had never fooled with them. I just wanted to see if any of you guys had any luck getting them to shoot accurately, 50-100 yds? I wanted to hunt with the ones I had, but they wouldn't group on a piece of writing paper, benched a 100yds, 4" groups was 50 yd accuracy. I have a guy wanting to trade me a Pedersoli .54, in on a custom rifle I built, and add quite a lot of cash. Now he is a younger guy, and I don't think he has done due diligence in wringing out the .54. If any of you have had good luck getting them to be accurate, PLEASE tell me what you did, in the following.
1. Bullet type, pure lead or not.
2. Paper for the cartridge, I use some from Sharps and had no issues.
3.Powder, size and brand, and volume used.
4, Did you have any trouble with the plate that cut off the tale of the cartridge galling, or wanting to stick. I had to squirt some lube in there every 2 shots, ever after polishing the plate till it was smooth as glass/
5. Sights, I had a lyman front globe sight, and a Creedmore type peep sold by Navy Arms back then. Not too expensive, but I used it on my Remington Roller with great success.

I might also add I am not a newbie at shooting black powder ML's, have about19, and competed very well on a local, state and at the National Level for several years. I await your answers, or anywhere you can point me in the right direction.

[john.k]

I have a IAB 54......not top end for sure,but never had an issue in 40 + years.........anyway ,i couldnt get it to shoot with the lee 54 minie(hollow removed),the only mold available here at the time......so i tried 58 PH minies in it .......massive improvement,and close to 4" groups.........never tried the proper "christmas tree " bullet ,nor any fancy cartridge making,maybe an improvement to be had.

[Ragnarok]

Probably better slug the bore. I picked up a new in box IAB Sharps .54 carbine a few years ago and it's got a really large bore...like .556"!!

Not a lot of shooter info on these paper cartridge guns...George Nonte's 'Black powder Guide' gave me enough info to make cartridges and get my carbine at least shooting. The style cartridge I use is a simple rolled tube with a tissue paper base glued in...flush fit so you can close the breech and not chop the end off the cartridge(you can unload it)….I had awful luck with 'paper-cutter' cartridges.

I use a heavier paper for my tubes and do nitrate the paper. Bullets are another matter....most bullets and molds you can buy are for Sharps made by Pedersoli and are closer to a true .54 caliber...these 'Christmas tree/ring-tail bullets shoot awful in my big holed IAB Sharps being too small. I've had some fair luck with a LEE round ball mold .562" plumber's lead balls. Have also done fair with LEE's 380gr REAL bullets in .54 which at the front groove measure .550" also cast plumber's lead.

A Pedersoli should have a bore more compatible with available bullets and molds....my IAB seems to like short bullets like round balls and the LEE REAL bullets. I have been making do with the balls and REAL bullets in mine.

One thing I have learned is that black powder is a must...substitutes just won't work well. Best advice I've got from anybody online is to fill the breech block cavity with grease/lube....this works great!! Can get way more shots before the breech gets too tight to open. I use my really thick 'Emmerts lube' and will allow me to shoot and shoot. I have no idea why the first shot doesn't just blast all the breech block lube out the muzzle but it doesn't....I can shoot a bunch and there will still be lots of lube in the breech block cavity and the carbine will open easy. Also seems to seal the breech/barrel really good. With a dry breech cavity I can get maybe 10-15 shots and the gun is too tight to open...filled with lube it will keep working indefinitely.

I'm self taught on Sharps paper-cutters...I will say that the 'Black Powder Guide' has some interesting info and enough info to get me going. I will also say that when I posted some questions here at the muzzleloader forum in got moved here to the Single-shot forum

I will add some more info...Black Powder works...I was having chronic slow-fire/hang-fire/no fire issues with Pyrodex and Triple7....My carbine's destruction manual lists a powder charge of 60-80gr 2F powder with an 'appropriate bullet'....George C Nonte(Black Powder Guide..mines old and tattered) lists some service charges for various original and repro muskets/carbines/pistols)...for a Sharps original he lists 60gr 3F as an original load...he also lists 'ball diameters' for various original and replica armaments....the Sharps .52 lists 'ball diameters' from like .525" to .555" my IAB military carbine being at the very least .555" bore(.555/.556" slugged...7 groove...hard to measure).

I think the Pedersoli paper-cutter Sharps are set up for .545" bullets BACO will sell you a box which I think they cast from a Pedersoli mold. I bought a box from them and they are just too small and as mentioned above shot poorly for me. They may work awesome in a Pedersoli. BACO Sharps .54 bullets measure .545" or so and I think 525 gr...the Pedersoli sharps molds BACO lists are expensive!

Random Sharps thoughts....you hear on occasion of a paper-cutter Sharps blowing the forearm to pieces! I don't know how the Pedersoli replicas or others are set-up...but my IAB does NOT have the lever detent leaf spring that screws to the barrel like an original Sharps. The lever leaf spring has an open cut in the front receiver plus a milled out cavity in the front wood for the spring....if you work the lever with a loaded chamber of loose powder or a cut-off paper cartridge any powder that is in the breech block cavity can and will be introduced into the forearm through the lever spring cut-outs in the front wall of the receiver....fire a shot and get a spark out the bottom and BLAMMO!...forearm blows-up! I think my IAB dates to 2005 and that's probably about the last of IAB as a company unto itself. The IAB of this vintage has a solid receiver front wall and the lever spring is a coil spring with a detent...so no hollow cut in the forearm and no leaf spring cut-out in the receiver for powder to get inside the forearm. It's interesting though that the cheap/cheesey "Sportsmans Guide instruction manual that came with my carbine has a parts picture and parts list for the old style Sharps parts(lever detent spring and cut-out forearm for it) so obviously IAB had produced that style Sharps in the past...Don't know whether you are worried about exploding your forearm or not? However if you have the old type lever detent mechanism it's probably a good idea to stick with 'flush-fit' cartridges so you don't inadvertently get loose powder in the forearm.

More random Sharps paper-cutter thoughts.....Loose powder loading...you may read here and there that you can just drop a bullet in the chamber and fill the rest with powder. I bet it would work fine..however My IAB with the huge bore has an equally large chamber...I messed around with measuring just how much loose powder my Sharps carbine would hold behind various bullets...and it would hold a lot! Better than 100gr BP. Could probably use less but then you got a bunch of slack in the chamber...muzzleloading a Sharps paper cartridge gun...I've read about that too....but again my chamber holds a bunch and you would have to exceed the manufacturers recommended load to do that....or possibly use a machined brass insert cartridge so the chamber would hold less...and to stop the bullet from just falling into the chamber.

The Sharps breech-loader and conventional black powder safety rules.....like you know how the rules say no slack in the load for a muzzle loader...ball must be seated on top the powder...no air-space. Hmmm?? The Sharps paper-cutter has a hollow breech face and no real method to make a 'tight' load. The paper tube cartridges I make are snuggly packed but still there is air-space all over the place in a Sharps chamber!! I did not design the thing and it does work as advertised so I ain't going to comment further on why a Sharps gets away with that

[Ragnarok]

Some of my experience with making Sharps paper cartridges....The paper used...some paper gets too soggy nitrating it like regular typing paper...I'm using a thicker 'resume' type bond paper which nitrates fine and is tough enough I have a fairly durable cartridge. I was nitrating the tissue paper I was capping the paper tube with but it gets soggy and fragile and I soon discovered that there is no need to nitrate the tissue paper used to cap the tube....clean fire channel and CCI caps blast right through nitrated or not.

Advantages to the stiffer paper tubes are that I can load the bullet into the tube and retain it on top the powder with my bullet lube the only 'glue'...no string tying bullets or bullet gluing….the disadvantage I've had or see with my type paper tube is that sometimes you can have a 'sizzler' in the bore...as in you open the breech after a shot and hear the last of the paper tube burning up in the bore...will sometimes leave a small strip of paper in the bore which is usually the glued seam of the tube where the paper tube is double thick and glue maybe negating/slowing the nitrated paper burn...another disadvantage I think is the amount of paper that needs stuffed out the bore each shot. I used a double layer paper tube briefly and there was always something left in the bore..a single wrap is plenty good. I can see advantages to like cigarette paper or lighter paper as far as fast and complete combustion. Lighter paper would also likely work better in the 'paper-cutter' method of use. My tougher cartridge paper is hard for my IAB to shear-off cleanly. I always look down the bore after a shot to make sure there is no paper in the bore...I blow it out if there is. I should probably experiment more with various nitrated paper but have been more or less satisfied with what I'm using

Round ball loads and bullet lube in a paper cartridge...(at least my style cartridge)...not too hard to do really. I put 65-70gr BP in and seat a .54/55" card wad cut from cartridge box cardboard tightly on top the powder then put a plug of thick Emmert's in the tube on top the card wad and seat the ball into the lube cookie. My Sharps balls are bigger than my tube diameter however they seat well to close to half in the tube...lube retains the ball nicely. I was worried about the powder getting contaminated with lube but the card and thick lube seem to do the trick. I have kept loaded cartridges over winter in a zip-loc bag and they fired like I had just made them. The ball diameter I use is bigger than my bore diameter of my carbine...I fretted about that..however my Sharps has a nice 'forcing cone' into the bore and the .562" soft lead balls can shoot very good. Others were mentioning using .570" musket balls but that's even more lead to force down to bore diameter. I went with a lube cookie so I could lube the ball down the bore as I couldn't come up with anything else to lube a ball in the Sharps. In the future I may buy some felt wads to try under the lead ball...just have not got there yet.

My other Sharps cartridge....the LEE .54 380gr REAL bullet...rifling engaged at loading bullet. These taper to wrong direction for a Sharps breech-loader...just opposite the normal Sharps Christmas tree/ring-tail bullets which are fat at the bottom and taper to the front...the REALs are fat at the front and taper to the rear for muzzle-loading. These should be too small for my carbine being .550" max...however cast from plumber's lead these actually work quite well in my carbine. This cartridge is just my normal size nitrated tube with 60gr BP and a lubed REAL bullet seated to the powder. The REAL bullet does occupy quite a bit of space in the paper tube and limits powder capacity. It does shoot well enough for me. I have not tried it at 100yds but it will do 2-3 inches at 50yds.

Bullets are the handicap with an IAB Sharps .54....most owners report large bores where normal Sharps molds/bullets are sized in the .540" range IAB guns are large bored I guess. I'm scared to order a pricy custom Sharps mold like from Moose molds or others for fear my carbine won't like the longer/heavier bullets.

Forgot paper cartridge glue!...I have tried super-glue...Elmer's craft glue...various glue sticks and found regular clear nail polish fast dry to be the best....doesn't have to be pricy Revlon or Maybeline just the cheap stuff. dries fast and sticks well to nitrated paper.

[john.k]

I have slugged the bore of my IAB,long time ago,but it does fully engrave the Lee 400gn 54 minie,at .533.,and Im reasonably sure its .533 groove.......it also seems to have a hardchrome bore,anyway it never fouls ,and it has in the past fired hundreds of shots in one day at a boy scout event, long before gun hate became a political football.........and I would not mind if the bore was larger,as I have a fair collection of 58 moulds,only one 54...........edit......I have never given a moments concern to the old foreend blowout theory,and I think its nonsense.

[varsity07840]

The Pedersoli Sharps has a .520 bore size and .540 groove. My sporter is extremely accurate. Shoot the .544 Lee Xmas tree ringtail from a mould that was a custom run for Lodgewood Mfg. It very close to the Moose version, which I have also used. I use it unsized in 30:1 alloy and 60 gr. of Swiss 2F. I use Charlie Hahn's cardboard tubes instead of paper cartridges. The ringtail base of the bullet fits in the tube. Pedersoli's ringtail is TOO BIG for the tube and is much heavier. The tubes make loading ammo much easier and are available in different lengths to suit your chamber and bullet length. Check out Charlie's web site. www.hahnmachineworks.com.
Besides his tubes, Charlie does excellent chamber/breech block modifications that eliminate binding of the breech block due to gas leakage and powder fouling. It's a common problem with many Sharps rifles.

The target has 28 shots at 50 yds.