January 4, 2022. With all the plastic tacticool gear and blacktical rifles on the market, it is refreshing to see some old-fashioned craftsmanship — hand-built rifles with rich engraving, rich bluing and colored case-hardened receivers. This was exactly what we saw at the Shiloh Sharps booth in SHOT Show a few decades back. Beautiful firearms were displayed with stunning metal and wood. The Shiloh Sharps rifles are a tribute to a bygone era.
The Historic Sharps 1874 Lever Action Rifle is an American Classic
Shooting USA featured the 1874 Sharps rifle. This side-hammer breechloader was popular among plains buffalo hunters. Christian Sharps was the first to patent his rifle design in 1848. The Sharps Model 1874, shown below, was an updated version that could take metallic cartridges. Garry James, a firearms historian and author, said that the Sharps rifle came in a variety of calibers, including.40 and.50. There were also jillions upon jillions of case styles and configurations.
Photo by James D. Julia/Morphy auctions. Sharps rifles have been gaining some attention in recent times thanks to Hollywood. Tom Selleck played Matthew Quigley in the movie Quigley Down Under. Famous scene: Quigley used his 1874 Sharps rifle to hit a wooden bucket from a very far distance. The Sharps rifles used for the movie were made in part by Shiloh Rifle company, (Powder River Rifle Company). Three Sharps rifles were actually made for the movie. One was donated to the National Firearms Museum of the NRA, while another was raffled to support NRA shooting programs. In 2008, the third rifle (Selleck’s Favorite), was auctioned.
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