Arms, Armor & Militaria

.52 caliber. 20.625" round barrel. SN: NSN. Heavily oxidized metal without any finish, iron furniture, southern hardwood stock. Single shot percussion military carbine restocked and altered from breechloader to muzzleloader. Weak Sharps' patent markings on back action percussion lock and Lawrence patent markings behind the automatic priming magazine of the lock. Retains the original Lawrence patent rear sight base with no visible markings and the fixed base, German silver blade front sight near the muzzle. Restocked and rebuilt in a workman like manner by a reasonably talented gunsmith as a muzzleloading percussion carbine with an added percussion drum bolster in the barrel's breech and a breech plug with an extended iron tang similar to those found on Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee rifles. The original Sharps sling bar and ring, patchbox, buttplate, barrel band and trigger plate were fit to this replacement stock, along with the modified barrel and original lock. A somewhat crude iron triggerguard was added to the trigger plate.

The rationale for the rebuilding of the gun as a muzzleloader is somewhat obscure, but the Confederacy was known to do just such modifications, in particular to the roughly 900 Hall breechloading rifles and carbines altered to muzzleloader by Read & Watson of Danville, VA during 1862 and 1863. In this case it could be surmised that the Sharps Carbine from which this gun was built experienced a catastrophic failure of the breech block and the remaining parts were salvaged and returned to a functional form in the building of this gun. The use of nearly all of the parts of the original gun, in particular the patchbox and sling bar and ring suggest this was done for military rather than civilian purposes. The gun is completely untouched and in attic condition and appears to be a legitimate 19th century military modification of a Sharps carbine to a military muzzleloader, something that would only be done in the south during the Civil War as there would be absolutely no reason to do this much work and put so much effort into to making the gun functional otherwise. A very unique and very southern firearm from the period of the American Civil War.