hello everyone. i recently acquired a 1859 sharps rifle in 45-70. has anyone have any info on garrett arms.never been fired(yet)want be long. it has a 33 inch badger barrel with v. sigman mo. on top of barrel.how are the garretts compared to say pedersoli? it has what looks to be a c.and a two digit serial number on tang. any info would be welcome. thanks. sharpsman4570

Frank Garrett still sets up as a dealer at the N-SSA Nationals in Winchester, VA.  But it's been 30 years since he had those guns made in Italy and imported them.  The original percussion ones are well liked by N-SSA competitors.  I had purchased a .50-70 from him way back when, but the headspacing was sloppy and they had the wrong (percussion) lever in it for a cartridge gun, and I sent it back.  I have one of the percussion guns now that I picked up a couple years ago, but haven't had the time to tune it fully for competition.

If someone went to the trouble to rebarrel it, why do you think it's unfired?  Just curious...

Trigger tricks: If the hammer moves slightly rearward as you pull, the angle of the sear notch is too steep, and can be carefully stoned.  If you draw an imaginary line between the center of the pivots of sear and tumbler, the face of the sear notch should be just barely 90 degrees perpendicular to that line.  If the pull is "notchy", the face just needs stoning to polish, without change in angle.  If the engagement is too deep, resulting in a long pull, make a small brass shim from a piece of cartridge case, degrease the tumbler and shim with denatured alcohol, and use J-B Weld to fasten the shim to the radius of the tumbler just ahead of the sear notch.  The shim experiences no wear as it only acts as a spacer, and MANY N-SSA guns have fired thousands of rounds in competition with one of these shims J-B'ed to the tumbler.

Spring tension:  If the sear issues are solved, or non-existent, and the gun just has a beastly trigger spring, spring tension can be reduced.  the lower leaf of the sharps mainspring is the sear spring.  this can be narrowed by grinding the width (not thickness) of the spring.  Keep all curves very smooth and cool the spring frequently during the grinding process.  It should at no time be hot enough to burn your finger during the process, or you run the risk of changing the temper.
Stone polish the tip of the spring where it bears on the sear, as well as that surface on the sear itself.

"down-and-dirty" trigger job:  Use Dri-Slide (or other pure molybdenum disulfide or "Moly" lubricant) on all friction surfaces of the lock after degreasing and removing other lubricants.  Work in to the moving surfaces by rubbing together.  Then add a small amount of good quality gun oil.  Good for an immediate 30%  decrease in trigger pull on almost any lock.

The Garrett tooling was bought by one of the other Italian mfgr's, can't remember which one.  One of them makes a sling ring bar and ring that should be nearly a drop-in replacement for yours.   

Sear diagnosis:  To sort which of the sear problems is present, remove the spring from the lock and work it with hand pressure.  With light pressure on the sear, you should NOT be able to push hard enough on the hammer to trip it.  You can also feel the rearward hammer movement I was talking about as you press up on the sear to release it.

I'll try to track down the current mfgr closest to Garrett's tooling for the replacement parts you wanted.  Another option: when the Sharps Company and frontier gunsmiths did carbine-to-sporting rifle conversions, they often just put a steel blank in the oval cutout in the stock and a filler screw in the action.  Might be easier, and would be a legitimate, authentic mod.

I heard that Pedersoli bought the tooling of Palmetto who made the Sharps rifles for Garrett. I also heard that the tooling was so worn out that Pedersoli made all new tooling for their Sharps rifles. 

I have two 45-70 Garrett Sharps rifles. One was consistently more accurate than the other so I rebarrelled the "bad" one (It really wasnt bad, it just wasnt as good as the other).  The other one has been consistently very good.  The finish on the wood washed off the first time it got wet. A few coats of Tru Oil fixed that problem. When the firing pins broke, replacements had to be hand fitted. The firing pin channel in the breechblock was rough and had to be polished. I paid under $400 for each (dealer price) and put about 20,000 rounds through them. Got my money's worth and won a few medals with them along the way. There is a place out east that has bought all the spare parts that Garrett had, I cant think of the name but will look for it tomorrow. I like my rifles a lot, hope you have as much fun with yours as I have had with mine. Joe S

My Garret sharps has the percussion style lever in that it does not retract any to take tension off the extractor for loading. I think all of them were that way. Folks brag about them but mine took a lot of work to get it fully functional over a long period of time. With a .443 /.462 bore/groove barrel it was a chore finding a bullet that worked. Finally got one and shot it in BPCR competition for about 5 years.