Many years ago I had a place called Siegrist(?) Machine rebarrel and convert a Ruger No. 1 to 50-140. They had to remove some metal in order to have the round be able to feed. Not near as much as they do for the 577 NE conversion, so I had no worries about loss of strength in the action. I had a fairly heavy 30" barrel with a mercury recoil reducer in the stock, both for balance and to add a little more weight. I could easily surpass 500 NE ballistics and match 510 Wells ballistics. It was a thumper. A couple things you need to watch out for. First, a 50-140 Sharps uses a .512 diameter bullet, while most "modern" 50's use a .510 diameter. So unless you are going to use only cast bullets, you might want to specify the proper diameter when getting a barrel. This also caused my second issue...I bought a set of RCBS dies and it resized the case, I was using 50-140 Bell Basic brass, to accept a .512 diameter bullet. The .510 just sort of slipped into the case and if held bullet down and jiggled a bit, would cause the bullet to move forward and in one occurance leave the case. At the time I built this, 500 NE brass was about twice as expensive and very difficult to obtain. The 50-140 had a much thicker rim which to me is a plus in reloading. Anyway, it went the way of many of my project guns, found something else I could not live without and selling this was an easy way to pay for a new toy. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me and we can talk some more. It was a fun gun.