Pepper-box
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/AllenAndThurberPepperbox.jpg/220px-AllenAndThurberPepperbox.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Pepperbox_tula3.jpg/220px-Pepperbox_tula3.jpg)
The pepper-box revolver or simply pepperbox (also "pepper-pot", from its resemblance to the household
Pepperbox guns have existed for all types of
Early years
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Vapen01.jpg/220px-Vapen01.jpg)
This type of firearm was popular in North America from 1830 until the American Civil War, but the concept was introduced much earlier. In the 15th century, Ribauldequin, a version of the volley gun, had several single shot barrels were attached to a stock, being fired individually by means of a match. Around 1790, pepperboxes were built on the basis of flintlock systems, notably by Nock in England and "Segallas" in Belgium. Building on the success of the earlier two-barrel turnover pistols, they were fitted with three, four or seven barrels. These early pepperboxes were hand rotated.[2]
The invention of the
Popularity
The pepperbox, or at least the firearm that is mostly associated with this term, was invented in the 1830s and was intended for civilian use, but military officers often made private purchases for their own use.
A few percussion pepperboxes were still hand rotated but most have a mechanism that rotates the barrel group as the hammer is cocked for each shot.[5] Single-action versions were made, notably by Darling of Massachusetts, but the vast majority use the self-cocking system whereby pressing the trigger rotates the barrel block, cocks the hammer and finally fires the weapon. The main producer of self-cocking top hammer pepperboxes (mostly referred to as "bar-hammer pepperbox") in the United States was Ethan Allen, but this type of weapon was also produced in large quantities in England.[6]
Some pepperboxes fired the lower barrel instead of the upper, such as the American Blunt & Syms, the English Cooper or the Belgian Mariette (with configurations between three and twenty-four barrels). Usually these employed an "underhammer" action, with the hammer mounted under the frame, behind the barrels, forward of the trigger (often a ring-trigger). Several other types of firing mechanisms exist, such as rotating internal firing pins (Rigby, Robbins and Lawrence, Comblain), rotating firing pins on a hammer (Sharps, Grunbaum)
The flaw with the pepperbox design is that it becomes more front heavy if the length and number of barrels is increased, making accurate aiming difficult. With most types in particular those with rotating barrel clusters, it is almost impossible to aim beyond close range because the hammer is in the line of sight (some pepperboxes have a slot in the hammer through which one is supposed to aim), there is no place to put a frontsight (putting one for each barrel would only increase the weight of the front end and likely make drawing the weapon awkward), and the gun is too front heavy to permit quick and steady aiming. However, the primary market was for civilian self-defense, so its most common use was at close range. Common practice at the time, indeed, was not to aim pistols, but instead to "shoot from the hip", holding the gun low and simply pointing at the target's center of mass. Gunfights often happened at a very close range. With this use in mind, many pepperboxes, in fact, have smooth-bored barrels, even though rifling had been commonly used for decades by the time of their manufacture. In the
Multi shot percussion firearms were often considered dangerous because firing one powder charge could ignite the others (a "chainfire"), all at the same time, when proper care was not taken. This problem was largely eliminated by the introduction of nipple partitions, evident on later percussion revolvers, which largely shielded the percussion caps on neighbouring chambers from the flash struck by the weapon's hammer during firing. However, this feature is rarely seen on pepperboxes, although some had the nipples placed in recesses or at right angles to each other to reduce the chance of a chainfire. A chainfire in a pepperbox would be far less dangerous than in a single barreled revolver because with a pepperbox, each of its bullets could freely exit its own dedicated barrel (essentially turning it into an impromptu volley gun). Similarly, if a chamber was not in exactly the right position when the hammer hit the cap it would fire normally and safely, as opposed to a single barrelled revolver where a cylinder misaligned with the barrel when fired could cause a potentially explosive malfunction.[12] This simplicity and safety helped the pepperbox survive after more modern revolvers came along, as well as keeping production costs a lot lower than revolvers with their more complex mechanisms.
Transitional revolver
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Antietam_officer.jpg/220px-Antietam_officer.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Transitional_revolver.jpg/220px-Transitional_revolver.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Slagl%C3%A5srevolver_SA%2C_5_skott%2C_Jonas_Offrell_patent%2C_serienr_415%2C_1800-talets_mitt_-_Livrustkammaren_-_17622.tif/lossy-page1-220px-Slagl%C3%A5srevolver_SA%2C_5_skott%2C_Jonas_Offrell_patent%2C_serienr_415%2C_1800-talets_mitt_-_Livrustkammaren_-_17622.tif.jpg)
A development from the pepperbox are the so called "transitional" revolvers. These weapons have a cut-down pepperbox
It retained the pepperbox's
Since the bullets didn't have to be rammed down from the muzzle but were loaded into the cylinder behind the barrel, they could be slightly larger than the bore, which facilitated the use of rifled barrels. Whereas most pepperboxes are smooth-bore, most transitionals are rifled.
Revival
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Remington_ZigZag_derringer.jpg/220px-Remington_ZigZag_derringer.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Apache_revolver.jpg/220px-Apache_revolver.jpg)
The pepperbox experienced a kind of "revival" in the late 19th century as a short, easily concealable
A special variation of this kind of sidearm, in which the shortness of the barrel cluster was fully used, is the Belgian
One of the more interesting pepperbox revolvers is the
Modern use
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/%D0%A1%D0%9F%D0%9F-1%D0%9C_-_%D0%A2%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%93%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%9C%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%8F_%D0%9E%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%B8%D1%8F_01.jpg/220px-%D0%A1%D0%9F%D0%9F-1%D0%9C_-_%D0%A2%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%93%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%9C%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%8F_%D0%9E%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%B8%D1%8F_01.jpg)
The pepperbox design was used for a small number of weapon designs in the 20th century, most notably a six barrelled derringer in
During the 1960s an eight barrelled pepperbox shotgun, the Colt Defender Mark I, was designed by Robert Hillberg; but never went into production.
In the 1970s Heckler & Koch produced the five barrelled P11 pistol designed as a covert underwater firearm firing 7.62 X 36mm darts electrically.
The Osa is a Russian four barrelled pistol designed to fire a range of non-lethal and flare rounds from electrically-fired 18×45 mm cartridges.
The Reprringer is a design for a five barrelled 3D printed pepperbox sidearm in .22 LR, which received widespread media coverage.[24][25][26][27]
Popular culture
In the first season of Critical Role, and its animated adaptation The Legend of Vox Machina, the character Percival de Rolo III, played by Taliesin Jaffe, invented and wielded a pepperbox revolver.[31][32]
See also
References
- ^ Cooper, C, Samuel Colt: Arms, Art, and Invention (2006) p.26
- ^ The new weapons of the world encyclopedia: An international encyclopedia from 5000 B.C. to the 21st century by Diagram group, (Macmillan, 2007) p.126
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85109-470-7
- ISBN 978-0870151583.
- ISBN 978-0-8263-3593-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-486-42161-2
- ^ Sharps pepper-box pistol 1859–1874
- ISBN 978-0-87349-767-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4548-7644-1.
- ^ Hearst Magazines (March 1981). "Forty-Niner's pepperbox pistol". Popular Mechanics. Hearst Magazines. p. 72.
- ISBN 978-1-922132-02-4.
- ^ Kinard 2004, p. 63
- ^ Lavin, J.D. (1965). A History of Spanish Firearms. Arco gun library. H. Jenkins. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
- ^ Howard RIcketts, Firearms (London, 1962)
- ^ Kinard 2004, p. 65
- ISBN 1-85367-692-6
- ^ "Pistols with pedigrees" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-08-10. Retrieved 2011-08-26.
- ^ "Civil War revolvers". Retrieved 13 February 2016.
- ^ "Hell in a handbasket". Archived from the original on 2008-07-19. Retrieved 2008-11-06.
- ^ Chapel 2013, p. 99
- ]
- ^ Chapel 2013, p. 161
- ISBN 978-3-426-43689-9.
- ^ 5 Different 3D Printed Gun Models Have Been Fired Since May, 2013 – Here They Are, 3D Print, September 10, 2014. (archive)
- ^ Introducing the 3D-printed Reprringer Pepperbox (VIDEO) Archived 2018-07-06 at the Wayback Machine, guns.com, September 13, 2013. (archive)
- ^ 3D Printed Pepperbox Pistol, firearmblog, October 8, 2013. (archive)
- ^ 3D printed guns a year on: from prototype to serious weapons, Wired, 16 May 2014. (archive)
- ^ Firearms blog
- ^ Plans for 3d print pepperbox
- ^ Sawer, Patrick (19 June 2019). "Student who used 3D printer to make guns is convicted in UK legal first". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2023-03-16.
- ^ Roberts, Tyler (1 February 2022). "McFarlane Debuts Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Figures". Bleeding Cool. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
- ^ Purcell, Kay (10 February 2022). "Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina – Episodes 7–9 spoiler-free first impressions". Gaming Trend. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)