Just purchased my first Sharps rifle. As a pretty diehard Ballard and Rolling Block collector/shooter, I never contemplated a Sharps. But this rifle was offered to me and after examining it closely, I discovered the restoration was done on a Freund Bros. marked action! It has the Freund upgrades of dual extractors, camming breech block, and firing pin, and was done in a JP Gemmer style. The workmanship on the restoration is amazing, and really high grade wood. The chambering sure wasn't my first choice, as it's a .50-140, but it came with several hundred cases, 4 boxes of loaded ammo, and two molds for paper patch and grease groove bullets. So really a tough Sharps to pass up as my first one.
I've been chatting with a friend who loads BP in his .500-450 Jeffries rifle and uses something called "amaranth seeds" as a filler over powder, and tells me his loads in the lighter Jeffries rifle are like .50-70 loads, so that should make shooting the big .50 manageable in this 15 lb. rifle.
The restoration work on this Freund Sharps rifle was done by the late Bill VanHorne. His wife Emma did checkering, so the checkering work is hers. He was in Stout, Oh. and asume he's gone now.
Freund stamp:
The .50-140-678 gr. next to one of my .45-70-480 gr.