Billll finished off a working replica of a .36 cal. pepperbox pistol and has review it over at Billlls Idle Mind. The Pepperbox is a repeating firearm design that was the forerunner to the true revolver. The design was mainly used for pistols but it was also used for repeating rifles.
Billls blackpowder pepperbox replica.
Mark Twain wrote about a pepperbox:
“If she didn’t get what she went after, she would fetch something else.” And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon–the “Allen.” Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.”
Billl’s is not much more accurate! Seems more like a gun to scare off your enemies than to do them damage.
James of Hell in a Handbasket spotted this photo on a Peruvian travel blog. It is homemade percussion lock gun. The owner apparently uses homemade gun powder (not hard to do … but kids don’t try this at home).
If you have read this blog for a while, you know how much I like examining homemade guns
Smooth bore or rifled? Probably smoothbore, looks like a pipe for a barrel.
Last year I wrote about a massive 2 bore rifle, that was not yet fully complete. Colin Stolzer, of Stolzer & Son’s Gunsmithing, contacted me with some additional information and photos of the completed rifle. Colin build some of the parts of the rifle while he was an apprentice of Master Gunsmith Steve Zihn. Click to expand all the photos.
Colin also forwarded on an email from Steve Zihn. I wondered if it was a true rifle or a paradox gun (part smoothbore, part rifled). Steve confirms that it is a rifle:
it’s a real rifle, not a paradox gun. 36″ barrel , but it only came to 22 pounds. If I ever do another one I am going to make a recessed breach because you can’t get your hand around anything larger. that’s why it’s “only” 22 pounds. If I were to use a barrel that would get it up to 30 pounds I’d still have to wrap a stock around it. Then no normal man (even with big hands) can grip it and the recoil will cause it to jump out of you hands completely.
You can tell them about yourself 6′ 5″ tall, and 240 pounds . You shot the 4 bore and it was enough to cause you trouble. So you can just imagine what a 2 bore would be like (4X the recoil at the same scale) It will make a good post for you. then tell them about the 8 bores you are building. If there ask anything more I’ll chime in later and endorse you.
Colin says:
Back when I was apprenticing in his shop he was commissioned to build a 4 bore Muzzleloader in a similar style as the 2 bore.
When it was nearly finished and needed to be sighted in I got the pleasure of helping do that job. The 4 bore exerts 255 PSI at 32 FPS of felt recoil(if I remember the number correctly), and I can tell you that at 6′ 5″ and 240 pounds and being very experienced with big bore guns, it was still more than enough to push be back a quick two step. And after 2 shots left me black and blue for about 5″ around my shoulder area(part of that was because the rifle was built for a smaller statured person so it really didn’t fit me). But the owner of the 4 bore shot it once and sent it back to Steve to sell.
The man bought more gun than he could handle, and I believe it was more painful than he wanted to ever shoot again(speculation on my part).
Heh, personally I am pretty recoil sensitive. As much as I want to shoot one of these *big* bores, I think I would rather watch someone else shoot them
I asked Colin why these types of big bore guns are never seen with a muzzle brake:
In a smokeless powder rifle of these calibers a muzzlebrake would be a necessity but with blackpowder, which is what most of the big bore guns are, the powder doesn’t convert to gas expansion rapidly like smokeless so the benefits of a brake would be minimal.
And then you run into the aesthetics, the guys who buy these kinds of rifles are typically traditionalist and putting a muzzlebrake on a classic African rifle would be a sacrilege to most of them, so it just isn’t done. I’m honestly not sure a guy could build one of these is a smokeless configuration, by the time you got enough steel into the action to hold the pressure, you wouldn’t be able to hold the gun up, and even then the recoil would probably be literally lethal.
I’ve read pretty much everything I can find on big bore rifles, and almost every one of the classic dangerous game hunters wrote of the 2 and 4 bores giving them headaches, spinning them around(Sir Samuel Baker said his 2 bore would try to spin him around like a “weathercock in a hurricane”) nosebleeds, and concussions from the recoil. Sir Samuel Baker ended up with permanent nerve damage from using the 2 bore that effected him in his declining years to a point were it left him basically punch-drunk all the time and his wife had to care for him.
This type of rifle starts at $4500 and then goes up depending on what wood , engraving, checkering etc. you want.
Colin is currently specializing in building custom muzzle loaders, including double rifles and big bore 8 gauge/bore rifles. He can be contacted at his website Stolzer & Son’s Gunsmithing.
The Bone Collector is a premium .50 caliber muzzle loader.
Over the standard Triumph model it features:
* Wethershield coated receiver and barrel.
* 28″ fluted barrel with QLA muzzle system
* Fiber optic sights
* Reversible hammer extension.
* Power Rob Ramrod
Reader Joe kindly sent through photos of his .45 cal Philadelphia derringer made from a kit I blogged about some time ago.
It looks great!
Here are four pics of the derringer I built in 1978 at age 19. I colored the wood by staining with a Minwax walnut and then handrubbing linseed oil over it. I did not cold blue the barrel. For some reason I inlaid the side brass pieces where the pin comes through the barrel and stock.
Thanks Joe.
If anyone else has unique, custom, interesting or a firearm with a good story. Please send pictures through!
The blackpowder cannon enthusiasts over at the Graybeard forums came up with some amazing pieces of artillery.
CU_Cannon built the “Nano-mortar”. It fires .177″ BBs. The bed it sits on is 1″ long.
Click to expand the images.
The Nano-mortar
Here is a video of it in action
Blueprints
Cal.45 built a 3mm mortar called the “Pico “Mortar”
The “Pico Mortar”
The pico mortar was build solely with a drill-press, some files and emery paper. It fires 3mm shot pellets (0.118 inch diameter) and has a maximum load of 0.2 grains of blackpowder. It has a barrel length of 8mm (0.315″) and can fire 6 meters (20 feet)
Anyways. I started with a load of about 0.2gr Swiss #2 but this did just a sizzling sound, so from the next shots on I used Swiss #1 (which is even finer in granulation: about 0.011 to 0.015 inch) which produced a nice snapping. Cheesy.
The touch hole is 0.5 millimeters = close to 0.02 inch (that makes it about 16% of the bore diameter (if one may still call it so).
Priming was done by filling the touch hole granule by granule; sweaty hands help maneuvering these tiny particlesin place.
First I wanted to enlarge the touch hole to fuse diameter and keep the rest at the smaller diameter (to keep some pressure) but the wall thickness is that small, that this wasnot possible.
Ignition with a lighter proofed to be better than trying to do it with a match: the flame produces soot but therefore does not function (kept them as size reference on the photo though).
Whatever. At first I thought that the shot would barely leve the muzzle: wrong!
Firing from the kitchen table I shot dimples into the door! This was 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) away! By the trajectory (angle of the mortar and height of impact) this means an estimated firing distance of 6 meters (about 20 feet): I would never have guessed this to be possible with a piece that has a barrel length of just 8 millimeters (0.315 inch).
The “Pico Mortar” being fired
“Pico Mortar” blueprints
Rickk built the “Nano Cannon”
The “Nano Cannon”
Now I know what only the others who have made one know… what the tremendous roar they make sounds like Grin
Bore is 3/16 (.186), so it will take a BB. Fuse is 5/64, so it will takes 1/16 fuse.
Trunions, as well as cascable, are 3/16 inch steel rod pressed into shallow 3/16 holes and then brazed in place.
All the work was done on my drill press, with some help from an angle grinder and a file for shaping.
It needs a pit more polishing, but I just couldn’t wait to fire it ! Total time into is so far is about 2 hours.
The “Nano Cannon” with carriage
I found the smoldering paper towel pieces about 15 feet away, and the gun recoils back about 6 inches!
BTW, for BB caliber, Q-tips make excellent cleaning rods.
Terry C. built the the very first micro-gonne. A hand gonne is a hand held cannon. It fires #4 buckshot.
the micro-gonne
The micro hand gonne being fired. Note the wooden rod attached.
There is ‘big bore’ and then there is the 2 bore. Schroeder & Hetzendorfer make a cartridge called the S&H 2 Bore Blackpowder Express.
These photos are amazing
.700 nitro express next to 2 bore and 3500 grain bronze solid
.500 S&W, .45-70, .700 Nitro Express, 2 bore
The caliber equivalent of 2 bore (’bore’ is generally interchangeable with ‘gauge’ in regard to caliber) is 1.326″ or 33.68mm! Thebronze solid bullet weights 3500 grain / 1/2 pound / 226.80 grams!
While technically fired from a rifle these are more like massive shotgun slugs: a heavy projectile at a low velocity. The 2500 grain bronze solid leaves the barrel at 1500 ft/s and with 17487 ft·lb of energy.
Apart from the nerve destroying recoil, heavy rifle, heavy ammo and expense these big bullets slow down dramatically after entering the game and hitting bone. A problem when hunting elephant.
They even come bigger than this. The 1 bore has a caliber of 1.67″. The A Guage/Bore, about 2″, was used for punt guns.
This essay takes a look at early firearm development up till the 1500’s. It is a fascinating read.
Certainly, the first uses of gunpowder are psychological – loud bangs and sausage-shaped rockets snaking across the battlefield to terrify men and horses. This is the role we can see for the fire lances of 1132. It is a short step from here to the early handgonne. I believe that while the bamboo pellet throwers of 1259 did not use true gunpowder, they certainly were a first application of the principle of using burning gases to throw a projectile…
A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations. Punt guns were usually custom-designed and so varied widely, but could have bore diameters exceeding 2 inches and fire over a pound (.5 kilos) of shot at a time.
If you are not familiar with the 8-bore, it shoots a 1,250-grain conical bullet at about 1,500 fps, or an 860-grain round ball at 1,650 fps ….. This year, one of the .375 shooters got the chance to try it, and asked me if he should.
“Sure,” I said, “it will take you into a whole new world of pain that you never dreamed of.”
The round ball shot out of an 8 bore has a diameter on .820 inches! That is just over 20mm!
In one of the comments ThreePutt wrote:
“You teach a good lesson: One mans kick is another mans recoil.”
Very well said, I could not put it better myself!
Some of the other comments pointed out the dangers of both perceived recoil (how bad it feels to you) and actual recoil. I recommend reading the comments.
Below if a picture of an 8-bore rifle, it may be a Greener, but I am not sure:
Hi, welcome to my gun blog! This blog is dedicated to all things firearms related. If you are into AR-15 and AK rifles, skeet shotguns, self defense pistols or hunting arms there will be something here for you. I hope you enjoy it.
I want this blog to appeal to a worldwide audience and so I will be focusing on firearms and shooting rather than country specific politics. There are already many great blogs defending your rights!
Hi, welcome to my gun blog! This blog is dedicated to all things firearms related. If you are into AR-15 and AK rifles, skeet shotguns, self defense pistols or hunting arms there will be something here for you. I hope you enjoy it.
