The rifle is an original Sharps that is lettered to Kittredge of Cinn. Ohio. It then was probably shipped up the Missouri to Fort Benton Montana Territory, then freighted from there to Bozeman, where Walter Cooper made it into the gun seen in those pictures.
Walter Cooper had several buyers he used to get these guns, as Sharps had issues with Cooper not paying invoices in a timely manner. They also didn't like the customization of their guns, as some people felt other barrels were better than original Sharps barrels, and others shot those original barrels out, thus the need for a different barrel.
The caliber of this particular gun is 40-90 bottleneck. I have enlisted the aid of MLV in building loads as his knowledge and background in this stuff is legion. The only downside with MLV, is he isn't that great of a shot, so I have to do all the shooting.
MLV has been using 1-20 lead alloy and 85-88 grains of black powder to get this thing rolling. The bullet is a grease groove about 380 grains. We are still fine tuning it to see what the best accuracy will be.
As to the unpublished picture...MLV would have copyright cops on my porch if I used it. It will be made public soon enough.
![Image](http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee202/bridgershooters/100_0237.jpg)