Meacham Sharps barrel

[DrMike]

I recently purchased an 1863 Sharps, converted by Meacham. The barrel is round with no markings, and has 5 grooves. The serial  number of the receiver is C5439. Can anyone give me info on this barrel and who might have manufactured it...? The barrel is 22" in length.

Regards, Mike McCrae

[Arizona Trooper]

If it's a period barrel, it's most likely Remington. They rebarreled a lot of surplus actions after the war for Hartley & Graham. It's pretty certain that the 5 groove Trapdoors came from there.   

[Buck Stinson]

If it is a true Meacham, it was fitted with a barrel of English pattern with very deep cut rifling, which will have a convex bottom in each of the grooves.  These barrels were marked (crudely) with the Sharp's Old Reliable cartouche.  If your barrel is unmarked, it is possible that it has been changed.

[Trailrider]

IIRC, E.C. Meacham & Co. was a St. Louis outfit that modified surplus Sharps rifles and carbines for sporting and hunting purposes. I recall seeing one with a 32" barrel chambered for Sharps .45-2.1 (so marked), which, of course is the .45-70 basic cartridge.  However, the barrel had a very slow twist, so that it is likely it was a rifle-musket barrel originally, and meant for a bullet weight in the 300 gr. range! Perhaps they meant to get extra velocity out of it...more than possible with the heavier bullets and black powder.  The action was a regular Sharps, but the hammer had been slimmed down just a bit.

[Buck Stinson]

Meacham actually purchased most of the remaining parts, after the Sharp's Rifle company closed their doors.  Most of the parts Meacham purchased were for the percussion model.  Amoung other modifications, Meacham ground off the percussion capping device on the reciever and ground the cup off of the hammer nose, so it could be used for center fire metallic cartridges.  Meacham Sharp's are not of much interest to a Sharp's collector, mainly because they were very late in western history and saw little if any of the buffalo hunting days.  Buffalo were all but gone by 1880 and the Meacham didn't exist before that time period.