Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only 50-140 sharps ruger no1

I recently picked up a ruger no1 in 50-140 with a .510 bore. It was originally a 375 H&H. Built by a local smith some years ago. I have some brass and 40 more on the way. It came with some data and a large box of 580gr cast bullets.

I’m hoping that a few of you might have experience with this cartridge. I’m mostly interested in jacketed bullet loads.

I have had a 74 shiloh LRE chambered for 50-140 3.25" for 29 years never shot a jacketed bullet or smokeless in it, it's a black powder round to me. Paper patched lead alloy bullets 140+ grs. of Fg black.
Last year my brother found a #1 Ruger with a heavy bull barrel chambered for 50-140 he put a Vari x lll 6.5x 20 on it and brought it out to my place. He did not get any ammo for it but I had some loaded for mine. I bore sighted it and fired 2 rds making some sight adjustments. The next 5 were a connected in1 ragged hole at 50 yards. It shot nice recoil pretty tame because of the octagon barrel on it that went 1 1/8" across the flats making the gun weight around 15 pounds. Brass when you can find it starts life as 50 basic at about 75 bucks for 20. The very first thing you need to do of course is to determine the rate of twist, a 1 in 36 will be good for bullets to about 600 grains, you need a 1in 22 or 26 to shoot 600 to 800 grain bullets. The older Hodgdon's and accurate powder catalogs listed some smokeless loads that would have been dangerous on both ends to target and shooter. Ask specific questions and I will help if I can. MB

Get ahold of Jim White Josh. He has a Farmingdale Sharps in 50-140 he used on Kodiak a time or two, shot a 10 footer in the eye socket at spitting distance once. He uses jacketed bullets and I believe H870 powder. I know it’s one of the really slow burning smokeless powders.

I think I have some 450gr AFrames somewhere I could probably be traded out of too.

Jacketed is fine but dont duscount cast bullets for economy and even for effectiveness. Jacketed is fine but a mould and some lead alloy is a lot less spendy than a few boxes of jacketed bullets. Plus it may be difficult for awhilebto even source bullets so casting some may be the way to go. I do this for a 50-70 govt and its pretty cheap to keep it running.

With that muzzle brake, I assume this was not intended as some old west, Sharps or Winchester type gun. It is a shame, I would cut that brake off. This looks like it was a somewhat modern take on a British big game or safari class gun. The 50/140 was a good fit case for the action and 510 suitable for bullets used in the 500 3" Nitro Express.

I don know enough about applying loads from A to B. Take this with a grain of salt. I think you could safely substitute 500 NE loads. Those are double rifles loads in your very strong falling block. Your case is 1/4" longer, maybe a little skinnier. Hornady may list some loads. Did you look? I mean for 500 NE loads.

I guess you know Bill Ruger was inspired by a British single for his No1. Sorry I lost to many brain cells to recall. Then I cannot spell the F word.

I suppose without the brake and shooting 500NE loads a full 1" solid rubber pad would be a good addition. More rubber, less brake.

From Frank Barnes Cartridges of the World 9th Edition there is a cartridge named the 510 Nitro Express. It is in fact the 50-140 Sharps 3-1/4" in smokeless powder form. It was put together by Bob Schneidmiller along with famous and well respected gunsmith D'arcy Echols. The cartridge brass is 50-140 Sharps 3-1/4" (.510 bore), the name change (510 Nitro Express) is only due to utilizing smokeless powder so as not to confuse the original 50-140 Sharps Black Powder loads and use in older firearms. The gun utilized was a Martin Hagn falling block Farquharson based action similar to the Ruger No. 1 that you have. The smokeless loadings given in the 9th Edition were all by Schneidmiller in his work with the cartridge. They are potent to be sure and meet and beat the English 500 Nitro Express by a bit. I will list the loadings he gives in the edition but would caution that anything you do should be reduced by reasonable measures to start (care must be assessed with a big cartridge case so as not to reduce too much powder as to cause inordinate internal case pressures and muzzle flash that can become hazardous. Given the No. 1 is a robust action and starting reasonably reduced, I would think you should be fine, but again you need to apply all the precautions and responsibilities that reloading and discharging demand. No pressures were disclosed with this data so again be cautious with load development. All loads appear to be jacketed SP with one being a 500gr FMJ loaded to the same 500gr SP level.

From the 9th Edition: 510 Nitro Express (50-140 Sharps 3-1/4 Smokeless) Loading Data

Bullet, Powder, Grains, Velocity/fps, Energy/ft-lbs, Source

500 SP/FMJ, IMR4895, 90.0, 2,337, 5,173, Bob Schneidmiller,
550 SP, IMR4895, 88.0, 2,172, 5,762, Bob Schneidmiller
600 SP, IMR4831, 102.0, 2,053, 5,614, Bob Schneidmiller
700 SP, IMR4350, 85.0, 1,942, 5,860, Bob Schneidmiller

Case: Straight Wall; Bullet Dia: 0.510"; Neck Dia: 0.535"; Base Dia: 0.565"; Rim Dia 0.665"; Case Length:3.245"; Cartridge Length: 4.185"; Primer: says Large Rifle, would probably think you could utilize LRM with that amount of powder.

There you have it, not sure what your barrel twist is as they did not indicate one. CIP recommends a 7 groove, 1:15 twist for the 500 Nitro Express. Again this is printed data from the 9th Edition for a smokeless powder 510 Nitro Express (50-140 Sharps 3-1/4"), you would need modern well made brass and I would exercise caution throughout. You could buy latest edition, I'm sure this cartridge is still listed. The 600 grain load appears plump, as a comparison in big case use Hornady lists top loads with IMR4831 with 400gr bullets as follows: for 416 Rigby: 91.2 gr; for 416 Wby Mag: 115.0gr. Hornady top end listing with IMR 4831 with 500gr bullet for 458 Wby Mag: 119.3gr. I take no responsibility in your use of this published data, so use at your own risk. Best of luck.

In case you are not aware there is load data for smokeless powder for the 50-140 Sharps on the Hodgdon website. It’s held to low pressure (< 28,000cup) but they still achieve some useful ballistics. The Ruger No.1 action is a very strong action and you could load to higher pressure but your shoulder will likely be the judge of that.

The case capacity is close to 500NE and the Hodgdon site list data for that cartridge too. The 500 NE loads are held to around 40,000 psi and this should be workable for the Ruger.

Cast is probably the best option but Woodleigh make useful 450gr & 440gr jacketed 0.510” pills if you want to use jacketed bullets. Definitely use a magnum primer with a case of this capacity.

I would check the twist rate and throating and work within those limits.

That rifle was put together about 1995 by me. The barrel was installed by Montana rifle barrels. It was 32 in long originally.
Tha load I used for it was 105 grns of 3031, 800 grn hawk soft copper coated bullet, magnum primers. Shot very well never killed anything with it.
I did shoot it using up to 124 grns of 3031 but at that level it was too much for me to handle. Also tried 750 grn amax 50 bmg bullets but those boat tails kicked enough to numb my shoulder.
Glenn