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Arms Conversion

Converting the Sharps’ guns was done by altering the hammer to flat face and fitting a new breechblock, carrying a center-fire or rimfire pin. The barrel was sometimes re-lined and the gun chambered for the rimmed metal shell. An extractor was also fitted, working on the same pin as the block lever hinge.
Colts could be converted by the gunsmith, in Great Western’s own shops, or by the Colt company. Usually the job involved fitting a cylinder which had had the nipple bolsters turned off and the space taken up in the frame by a thick plate or ring, which was permanently attached, and carried a spring-flip loading gate. On the barrel was fitted a side rod ejector. Patents of William Mason, a former Remington and Winchester employee, and C. B. Richards, later professor of mechanical engineering in Yale, figure in this conversion era 73.
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