Fantastic Firearms

For those of you keeping up with my webserial Railroad! you know that I've armed the lead character with a triple barrel Colt .45 Peacemaker.

 David Naughton-Shires, inspired by the series, created this pic for us.

I would like to take all the credit for such an awesome piece, but the idea came about when I was researching late 1800 weapons, including the Peacemaker. The true inspiration for this gun was the pepper-box. 

Small and weighty, it was the first revolving type gun and the predecessor for all revolvers.
The firing mechanism was practically any kind, including flintlock, percussion cap, pinfire cartridge.

 The original pepperbox was a 1500's matchlock. The user had to load the gun, then fire each barrel seperatly with an individual match each time. By the late 1700's they improved this with the flintlock mechanism, making them a little easier to fire.

Later when percussion caps came about the pepper-box took off. They became common place guns for the frontier. With this ease of firing there came an increase in the number of shots made available. Soon they ranged from 4 shot to 24.


Yeah you read that right, 24 fucking barrels.

AWESOME!

This one took up to an hour to load, but would discharge in mere minutes.

Another design that came about was a parallel barrel as apposed to the circular. The pepper-box was also the inspiration for the Gatling gun.







I have put a lot of thought into steampunk costuming lately and after much encouragement from the spouse, I've decided to try my hand at making a mock up of the pepper-box. Copper piping, a wooden tool handle, some plumbing pieces, I think its a real possibility.

So, that's the pepper-box. Nice!