Винтовка Шарпса: История и особенности конструкции

Sharps rifles are a series of large bore, single shot, falling block, breech loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long range accuracy. By 1874, the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and it was one of the few designs to be successfully adapted to metallic cartridge use. The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West with their appearances in many Western genre films and books. Perhaps as a result, several rifle companies offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle.

Sharps' initial rifle was patented September 12, 1848, and manufactured by A. S. Nippes at Mill Creek in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1850. The second model used the Maynard tape primer, and surviving examples are marked Edward Maynard Patentee 1845. In 1851, the second model was brought to the Robbins & Lawrence Company (R&L) of Windsor, Vermont, where the Model 1851 was developed for mass production. Rollin White of R&L invented the knife edge breech block and self cocking device for the "box lock" Model 1851. This is referred to as the "first contract", which was for 10,000 Model 1851 carbines, of which approximately 1,650 were produced by R&L in Windsor. Hugo Borchardt designed the Sharps Borchardt Model 1878, the last rifle made by the Sharps Rifle Co. before its closing in 1881.

The military Sharps rifle was produced by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company and is a falling block rifle used during and after the American Civil War in multiple variations. Along with being able to use a standard percussion cap, the Sharps has an unusual pellet primer feed. This is a device which holds a stack of pelleted primers and flips one over the nipple each time the trigger is pulled and the hammer falls—making it much easier to fire a Sharps from horseback than a gun employing individually loaded percussion caps. It was used in the Civil War by multiple Union units, most famously by the U. S. Army marksmen known popularly as "Berdan's Sharpshooters" in honor of their leader, Hiram Berdan. The Sharps rifle made a superior sniper weapon of greater accuracy than the more commonly issued muzzle loading rifled muskets. This was attributed to the higher rate of fire of the breech loading mechanism and superior quality of manufacture, as well as the ease with which it could be reloaded from a kneeling or prone position.

The carbine version was very popular with the cavalry of both the Union and Confederate armies and was issued in much larger numbers than other carbines of the war and was top in production in front of the Spencer or Burnside carbine. The falling block action lent itself to conversion to the new metallic cartridges developed in the late 1860s, and many of these converted carbines in .50 70 Government were used during the Indian Wars in the decades immediately following the Civil War. Although long thought to be a coffee mill, experimentation with some of the few survivors suggests the grinder is ill suited for coffee. The modern consensus is that its true purpose was for grinding corn or wheat or, more appropriately, for grinding charcoal needed in the production of black powder. Unlike the Sharps rifle, the carbine was very popular, and almost 90,000 were produced. The British purchased 1,000 Model 1852 carbines in 1855 which were later used in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Sharps made sporting versions from the late 1840s until the early 1880s. After the American Civil War, converted army surplus rifles were made into custom firearms, and the Sharps factory produced Models 1869 and 1874 in large numbers for commercial buffalo hunters and frontiersmen. These large bore rifles were manufactured with some of the most powerful black powder cartridges ever made. Sharps also fabricated special long range target versions for the popular Creedmoor style of target shooting.

In 1990, the Western film Quigley Down Under, Tom Selleck's title character uses a Sharps rifle chambered in the .45 110, also known as the 45 27/8" Sharps. Theater Crafts Industry went so far as to say, "In Quigley Down Under, which we did in 1990, the Sharps rifle practically co stars with Tom Selleck." This statement was echoed by gunwriters including John Taffin in Guns and Lionel Atwill in Field & Stream, crediting the film with an impact to rival that of Dirty Harry on the Smith & Wesson Model 29 chambered in .44 Remington Magnum. Burt Lancaster's character Valdez in the movie Valdez Is Coming (1971) uses a Sharps rifle with deadly results at almost Also, in the western Billy Two Hats (1974), David Huddleston's character Copeland wounds Gregory Peck's character, Archie Deans, at a far distance. Firearms manufacturers such as Davide Pedersoli and Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing Company have credited these movies with an increase in demand for those rifles. The match is billed as the "biggest rifle event shooting in Eastern Montana since the Custer Massacre" and has since developed into a two day competition with eight shots for score on six steel silhouette targets at ranges from .