Basic Features of the Sharps

The basic principle of toggle-linking trigger guardlever and vertically sliding breechblock dated from that

Sharps New Model 1859 carbine illustrated in Official Records typified over 80,000 of this type bought by the North from Hartford gunmaker.

patent. Sharps’ sliding wedge breechblock is still with us; on artillery, as a rifle mechanism, and the leverlink-breech construction of the Sharps rifle, with its slide milled out on each side to reduce friction, is the genesis of the spring lever-toggle-breech action of the Borchardt-Luger automatic pistol.

No finer piece of precision manufacturing in steel and wood was available in the world in 1861 than a U. S. contract carbine; and among the best of these was the Sharps.
The “Model 1859” was the basis for the Civil War Sharps. If complete and original, perhaps its easiest detail for recognition is the R. S. Lawrence folding leaf rear sight, the spring-base of which is stamped R. s. lawrence/ patented/feb. 15th 1859. The carbine sight leaf is short, not less in range, but short because of the short barrel requiring less drop at the breech to get the same elevation. It does not fall over the base spring retaining screw, as does the rifle leaf, and is graduated 2-8 for hundreds of yards. The slot is square-ended, as is the New Model 1859 Rifle sight leaf slot; the leaf is graduated 1-7. In 1863 the rifle was re-regulated, a leaf of substantially the same proportions now being used, graduated 1-8, and the slot rounded to slip over the base spring screw to let the leaf lie flat when set at battle sight. Mechanically, the 1859-63 lockplates have the pellet primer patented by Sharps October 5, 1852, and modified by R. S. Lawrence’s pellet feed shut-off, to conserve the pellet primers, patented April 12, 1859. Sharps’ basic patent 1848 is stamped on the receiver left; the primer patents on the lockplates. On the barrel to the rear of the sight is new model 1859 or new model 1863, and in front, the company marking sharp rifle/ manufg co/hartford conn. Serials numbers are on the top tang of the action body, to rear of the loading trough.
Winston O. Smith’s The Sharps Rifle (Morrow & Company, 1943) gives some details of mechanical changes:

Basic Sharps design had vertical sliding breechblock. Here, patent drawing for Lawrence gas-check ring or plate shows also Sharps breech. Design is patent No. 26504 of Dec. 20, 1859, and appeared in all Civil War Sharps carbines and rifles with sliding breech.

The tumblers in the models prior to 1855 were too small for the weight of the hammer and strength of the main spring and frequently broke. Often the separate sear springs in these same models also broke. The tumblers were made much 96,504.
R. S. LAWREJfCE
Dec. 20,1859.

New Sharps-made parts from Civil War surplus stores still being sold were used in 1960’s by author to complete stripped barrel-breech unit of New Model 1863 rifle (top). Below is Sharps New Model 1863 Carbine which has had Indian use, and butt is replaced by section of Springfield Rifle Musket butt, held by rawhide repair.

stronger in the 1859 model, and the separate sear spring was eliminated from the models of 1855 and after, a thin extension of the lower branch of the mainspring serving as a sear spring.
To make possible the cleaning of the central section of the (flash) tube, a hole was drilled into it from the side of the block and normally closed by a small headless screw. The slot in this screw was too small, and when the threads inside became gummed with powder ... it was . . . impossible to remove the screw, and the screwdriver would strip the screw slot. In 1863 a screw with a large filaster (sic) head was (used).
The Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company used special machines, tools, jigs, fixtures and gauges in making each particular part of the gun, and the parts of each model from 1851 to 1855 are interchangeable to a very great extent. The parts appear to be almost perfectly interchangeable for all percussion arms manufactured in 1859 and after.
It is interesting to note that the tumblers, bridles, mainsprings, and mainspring swivels of these later models (1859 and after) are interchangeable with the corresponding parts of the Models 1860 and 1865 Spencer repeating rifles and carbines, and the Sharps sear can also be interchanged by first grinding off part of the sear arm.
In 1961, almost a century after it was made, I bought a used Sharps New Model 1863 barreled action. To this basic assembly I attached a used breechblock, and all new lock and stock parts, completing an “almost new” Sharps rifle from spare bits and pieces. Two details needed filing: the tumbler square, to receive the hammer, needed dressing down; and the stock and rear band required some compensating removal of metal. Otherwise, each part fitted the other as perfectly as if it had originally been put together that way, a tribute to the way in which President John C. Palmer’s Sharps Rifle Company workmen did their job under the U. S. Contract system.