Here's another oddball. It's a modern reproduction (from C. Sharps Arms of Big Timber, Montana) of a rifle Sharps never actually produced. They made three prototypes and displayed them at the 1876 Centennial Fair in Philadelphia and won a silver medal with one of them. One was a full stocked military musket, one a sporting rifle, and one a long range match rifle ("Creedmoor" rifle). One Col. Berdan used the match rifle with some success.
If you look at the lines of the receiver, you can clearly see the Sharps Borchardt that emerged from this design in 1878. Many say Sharps might have survived had they produced this instead of the Borchardt, which never sold well - shooters were not quite ready for a hammerless, striker fired rifle. Especially one with a safety that looked like another trigger...
Mine is a .45-70 with an 18" twist Badger barrel. My mid range load is 60 grains of Swiss 1.5 Fg under the Paul Jones "Creedmoor" bullet cast 20:1 (540 grains) for just over 1,100 fps. My 1,000 yard load was 53 grains of Goex FFg ahead of 7.0 grains of Reloder 7 for about 1,300 fps with the same bullet. One very accurate rifle...
