Two nice carbines

[Patrick H]

Hi, Friends. A buddy stopped by on his way through town today and showed me a couple of nice carbines he picked up at a gun show. I didn't take time to set them up and photograph them in detail, but I think you'll get the idea.

One is a Sharps conversion carbine. The other is a Spencer. The Sharps shows serial number 826XX. We could not find a serial number on the Spencer. Where should it be located? I spotted an area on top of the frame that could have been filed. If it was filed it was either done many decades ago or the piece has been EXPERTLY re-aged. Patina is deep and uniform overall. Spencer has numbers on various parts which don't all match. This suggests to me that it was assembled from parts of a few others.

Sharps has a notched butt plate for a patch box lid, but the patch box is not present. Two screw holes are present in the stock in that area, but no patch box nor apparent fill is present. Perhaps the carbine was restocked at some point. I can't explain the screw holes.

Spencer is missing a sling swivel. Both piece have bright, mirror-like bores, no pits, sharp rifling. Both have tight breech blocks, strong springs, both presented as shootable.

 

[Booner]

From the pictures they both look like they could be shooters!