Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Sharps '74 Question

I've been considering buying one of these in 45-70 or 45-90 for quite some time. I have what is probably a stupid question. One sees some with the trigger guard as the lever action and some with what appears to be a lever on the fwd rgt receiver. Which is standard and if the lever on the receiver is standard, how does one get a rifle with the trigger guard lever?

I posted this in the wrong forum. Will the mod(s) please move this post to the BPCR forum?

There is only one 74. I'm not sure what the lever you refer to other than for the action. It should look like these...

Thank you Shrapnel. Those are indeed magnificent. So the lever at the front of the receiver works the falling block? Gonna show my ignorance more and refer to the Quigly rifle. It had a lever that was integral with the trigger guard. Is that not historically accurate?

"So the lever at the front of the receiver works the falling block?"
-- PVT

The "lever" on the right side of the receive is the pin that retains the block in place. Turn the lever, pull out it out, and then the block drops out for cleaning.

As an aside, I shoot two .45-2.4" (erroneously AKA 45-90 Winchester) Shiloh-Sharps since 1987. If you are not going to load black powder, purchase a .45-70, which can be loaded to the .45-90 velocities in a Shloh-Sharps. If you load with black powder, utilizing FFFg black powder will increase/improve the .45-70 performance.

The rem. Hepburn has a side lever and drop block action!

[\quote]As an aside, I shoot two .45-2.4" (erroneously AKA 45-90 Winchester) Shiloh-Sharps since 1987. If you are not going to load black powder, purchase a .45-70, which can be loaded to the .45-90 velocities in a Shloh-Sharps. If you load with black powder, utilizing FFFg black powder will increase/improve the .45-70 performance. [/quote/

FFFG? Isn't that a little fine? I have an original Sharps 1859 in .45-2.6 or .45-100.
Are you using a drop tube or compressing it? Are you filling it all the way or using some sort of filler? Thanks.

I may be wrong but perhaps PVT's mention of Lever is the falling block actuating lever, aka levering the action down and open to eject and reload a cartridge as he saw in Quigly...

Here's a pic of my Sharps lever down with the falling block action open.

This might be more clear:
And the same lever now up:

Here is an original Hepburn rifle (not mine), guarded by two of my Ruger #1's. The lever that drops the block is quite visible.



There are a couple people making modern repros of the Hepburn. Here is DZ arms:

http://www.dzhepburn.com/gallery/

A few other rare actions used a side lever to drop the block. This Rodda Field's Patent that I owned for a while is one example. Another one I should not have let get away

Beautiful! Ya just gotta luv those lever guns...

I see how it works now. Thank you all for the responses and pics. I think a 45-70 is the best place to start.

Nope, LOTS of folks been using it in the 2.1 forever,....compressed.

As RN mentions, kinda' wakes up the 2.1, puts it into the 2.4 realm of power.

Interesting original you've got there,....

Saddle carbine in 2.6 ?

GTC