Original '74 Sharps

[Gunner500]

Thank You too Don and Distant Thunder, Don, I hadn't even thought about closing out a decade with that old rifle like you mentioned, very nice, and Thanks for the reminder, it will be an honor hunting with that rifle a few more times in the decades to come should the good Lord see fit to issue them to me.

Distant Thunder, what you see in the pic are the Mos mould, patched bullets, a naked bullet, and a recovered bullet alongside two African solids for my big doubles, they are the 570gr solid for the 500 Nitro and a 750gr solid for the 577 Nitro, both bullets made by Barnes.

The bullet as it falls from the Mos mould RDNCK gave me measures as follows:
1.315" length
.448" diameter
514 grains at 35 to 1 alloy
.455" patched

The recovered bullet [sitting between the solids] from the fourth 5 gallon bucket of water shot lengthways at 25 yards measures as follows:
1.293" length
.454" diameter
513 grains
with a .372" meplat

If some are wondering why two African solids are pictured here i'll explain it, the Barnes banded solids along with the BBW #13 solids are the very best straight line penetrators on ALL game worldwide, look very closely at the images of the solids and the expanded [recovered] bullet from my old Sharps 45-110, they look near identical, the old buffalo hunters fired round nosed bullets, after hitting buffalo they precisely turned into some of the finest straight line penetrating bullets know to mankind, and damn near a full 150 years later did modern man with his cnc machines, and after countless thousands of research hours AND African safaris finally develop a modern bullet that acted like the Sharps rifle bullets of days gone by.

All three bullets have a roughly 65% of total diameter meplat, they all have a tapering nose off the meplat on down to the parallel sides to the bullets bases, and by design thay ALL penetrate straight, they allow you to pick your path to the vitals regardless of angle presented, I damn near fell over in the pasture when I saw the shape of that old round nosed paper patch bullet when pouring it out of the fourth 5 gal bucket of water.

The 4 tough plastic buckets with their lids and bottoms as well as being completely full of water is a hell of a penetration testament to these old bullet designs and the rifles that fire them, the alloy used was a soft 35 to 1, all lids and bottoms were hit in the same spot on entry, exit, and reentry, telling me in fact the bullet traveled in a straight line to it's end.