A Sharps I saw at the Tulsa gun show?

[Fly]

I love looking at all the great ole gun's of the past.But one gun really took my eye.
There was a 1863 Sharps why a huge hex barrel compaired to my .54 copy.Mmmmmm
so I looked & it had what looked to be a 40 cal bore.

Do any of you ever heard of this?

Fly

[Bent Ramrod]

Meacham's bought up a lot of obsolete percussion Sharps rifles and converted them to centerfire cartridge guns after the Sharps company folded. You may have seen one of those conversions.

[autofix4u]

I think I seen the same one, about 1.5" across the flats,and 30"+ long.

[EDG]

It seems to be common slang to refer to the barrels as hex when they are really 8 sided and are octagons.

[single shot jimmy]

I have a 1.25 x 34" on my 69 sharps and the one at Tulsa dwarfed mine.

[Multigunner]

Very heavy barrels were common for long range target shooting. The .40-80 cartridge was for many years the leader in the 1,000 yard matches. It held the record for smallest 1,000 yd group till the 1960's, when edged out by the .25-06.

Besides custom target rifles many Buffalo guns had very heavy barrels.

PS
Only true Hex (six sided) barrel guns I've heard of were made by a Miner who used broken jack hammer and rock drill shafts to make barrels. Their was an articles on his guns in an old book I had years ago. I think his rifles were muzzle loaders. I saw a brass Hexagon barrel on a muzzle loader hanging in a store in the next county many years ago, not sure if that was one of his, if so the barrel would have been plated steel rather than sold brass. It was a very heavy large bore barrel.
"Bosworth on the Rifle" mentions very finely made brass rifle barrels made by a gunsmith who liked to experiment on effects of bore finish on accuracy.

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

A buffalo runner planned to locate a small group, fifty to perhaps as many as a hundred buffalo and kill them all. Because of the barrel heat issue, most of them had two rifles, and a 40-60 round cartridge belt full of loaded ammunition for each. Add a canteen and a revolver to the sticks and rifle/ammo load, and he was packing about sixty pounds. Sit down behind the sticks, and fairly fast shooting would heat a barrel up quickly. 15-20 rounds, and swap rifles. Recoil from lighter rifles could get brutal on a hundred degree day. Swab the barrels and get back to work...

ID the lead cow, and shoot her. The herd mills around awhile, and the runner is shooting individual animals as they get restless and try to leave. He either kills them all, or the group breaks up and ramble off.

Weight VS Recoil VS Heat...