There has been a lot of mystery concerning the 45/110 Sharps cartridge. did or did it not exist I have had one of those smack myself on the forehead monments. I was looking through some old catalogs of the short that would have been used by market hunters and sports hunters running from the mid 1870's through into the 1880's. On the pages showing what they had on sale in loaded cartridges was the .45 2 7/8 case after which they listed loadings using this case for different rifles. Listed for the Sharps using this .45 2 7/8 case where loads with either a 500, or a 550 grain paper patched bullet loaded with 110 grains of black powder. This is the mysterious 45/110 Sharp's. You could also get this case loaded with 95, 100, and 105 grains of black powder. This same case was used to make up the .45/110 Winchester.

The 45/110 did not exist as a cartridge with this designation as a head stamp, instead it was the .45 2 7/8 case loaded with 110 grains of black powder. It is easy to forget after 120 or so years the old black powder cartridge designation had, in many cases, very little to do with the case, so there where a bunch of cartridges with the same load and the only thing that what different was what the cartridge was loaded for, Ballard, Marlin, Remington, Winchester, etc, Yes there was a .45/110 not as a head stamped
cartridge but as a loading for the .45 2 7/8 inch case.

__________________
From Wyoming where gun control is how well you can aim.
Kenneth A. Crips Radio Station W7ITC, ARRL, Life member of the NRA

Thanks for the move I knew there was a black powder cartridge thread but I could not remember it's exact name.

__________________
From Wyoming where gun control is how well you can aim.
Kenneth A. Crips Radio Station W7ITC, ARRL, Life member of the NRA

Of course that rifle existed. Matthew Quigley was quite a good shot with his.

__________________
Patrick G.

Wasn't Matthew from that great western town of FOLLYWOOD?

__________________
A truely successful life is mostly based on how well you handle PLAN B.

There were three Sharps 1874 rifles made for Quigley Downunder (QDU) by Shiloh Arms
(http://www.shilohrifle.com/) One was a spare, one was used in the action shots, the third rifle
was set back to Shiloh and was fitted and aluminum barrel. These rifles weight in at 13 1/2 pounds each
in the scenes where Quigley was using the rifle as a club Tom Selleck could not swing it fast enough to look good on the screen thus the aluminium barrel. Tom Selleck has all three of these rifles. The two that where actually used in the production of QDU Tom returned to Shiloh Rifle Company where they where completely refurbished, the one fitted with the aluminium barrel was refitted with it's original steel barrel.

I have always liked single shot falling block rifles. the 1874 Sharpes and the English Farquharson are my two fantasy rifles. I have a No. 1 and a No.3 Rugar which is about as close as I will get to a Farquharson rifle, the collectors have bid the price of original examples into the stratosphere.
The 1874 just maybe.......

__________________
From Wyoming where gun control is how well you can aim.
Kenneth A. Crips Radio Station W7ITC, ARRL, Life member of the NRA

Sharps never referred to their rounds as, e.g. 45-110. It was 45 cal 2 7/8 in. That round could be had and often was loaded with 120 gr of BP. Even what we call the 50-90 was never loaded with less than 100 gr. Its easy to do with a paper patch bullet. No problem getting near 90 gr of Fg into whats called a 44-77....just seat that PPB out a little farther.

The rifle Quigley used was a 2 7/8. The 3.25 in cases, based on intensive research, were never offered by Sharps. They did appear though in the mid 1880's after the the buffalo were gone. Some Sharps were re-chambered for these rounds in 45 and 50 cal. They offer little or no advantage over the already gigantic 2 7/8 cases and basically fell in disfavor.

If you just gotta have one chambered for a 3.25 case do your homework first...you're better off with the 2.1 (45-70) or 2.4 in cases.

The Sharps Borchardt long range match rifle chambered for the 45-110-550 using paper patch bullets was a favorite of Captain William DeV, Foulke. Captain DeV, Foulke and Dr. Hudson are perhaps two of the greatest teachers U.S. shooters have ever known.
DeV, Foulke told Townsend Whelen his Sharps 45-110-550 was the only rifle which: “has never lied to me.” This was prior to the advent of the Krag rifle and the wide spread use of smokeless powder and modern cast and jacketed bullets.

__________________
slim

Foulkes rifle was either chambered with the 2.4 in case or the 2.6...don't remember. The 2.4, what we call the 45/90 now was never loaded by the factory with less than 100 grs powder & often more. Rifles in the 2.6 in case are rare but could be loaded with 110+ gr of BP.


The early Sharps Creedmoor used the 44 2 5/8 or what we call the 44-90 now. Remington used a similar but slightly shorter version for their rifle. In the mid-late seventies Sharps opted for the .45 2.4 and 2.6 for long-range. To my limited knowledge, the 2 7/8 case was never used successfully in any long-range target competition.

Bottom line is that you can't automatically equate 45-100, 45-120 to any specific chamber length when reading the older literature.

Gents, I have an original 1874 Sharps rifle that was shipped on December 21, 1877. It is stamped 45 calibre on the top flat of the barrel and 2 7/8 on the right flat. I just thought that I would add this to the discussion.
Jon

Thats how they marked em. Remington was even more vague. My 44-77 roller is simply stamped under the barrel as ".44S" and that doesn't stand for Sharps either. The S means "44 Remington Special"

The cartridge was produced and it is my understanding it was popular with wealthy tourists who wanted to shoot buffalo and used to a less extent by hide hunters. The rifles were usually out of the price range of the average hunter plus there were few buffalo left by the time of these large calibers. While many gun manufacturing companies catered to the wealthy to stay in business, Remington was building rolling blocks for military export. Colt produced 2 lines of rifles during those years. The Lightning Pump rifle in small, medium and large frame with the largest caliber being a 50-200 - and the Burgess lever action in more modest calibers. Marlin built a 1895 lever action of various calibers with the 40-82 being popular with mining companies as they could beat Winchester on price. As to what cartridges were available during those times, I think the question remains open. I have seen a rare Colt's Lightning in the 50-200 that was purchased by a hunter in Africa and it was clearly stamped (50-200 Bronze) and the owner had the box of shells that came with the rifle and the bullets were bronze and only one had been fired. Leads one to speculate on how successful many of these calibers were.