Pepperbox Pistol

[Itchy Triggerfinger]

I jest bought me a Hoppe's Pepperbox Pistol.  Whew Hew!

The bidding started at $199, only one hour till the gavel went crashing down, but I chose the buy now option on Gunbroker cause I sawr one sell for $300+ dollars.

I am gonna come shoot it in at Texas Tenhorns in Greenville when I gets the chance.

Another stealth purchase my filly don't know about . . .

Itchy Triggerfinger  AKA That Shameless Womanizer!

[Pancho Peacemaker]

Very nice find.  Is yours the 6 barrel or 2 barrel model?

I almost pulled the trigger on a 6 barrel Ethan Allen (Hoppe's) replica, just to carry in my vest pocket.

Sent ya a PM too.


Pancho

[Itchy Triggerfinger]

It is a 6 shot Hoppe's.  I am stoked!

The guy selling it thought it did not lock up.  I did some investigating and it is not a DA.  You have to rotate the barrel by hand.  There is a guy on youtube shooting a four barrelled model.

Shameless

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[Ottawa Creek Bill]

Itchy.....

Post some photos

Bill

[Pancho Peacemaker]

Itchy.....

Post some photos

Bill

Here's a picture of the reproduction:



And an original:

[Forty Rod]

I had a "shotgun hammer" 6 shot and a double barrels from Hoppe's, both were kits.  I sold them a few years back along with a Dixie Lincoln derringer, and haven't stopped kicking myself since.

[Itchy Triggerfinger]

The top picture in Pancho's Post is the very same weapon of mass destruction.  I found these quotations from Mark Twain about said shooting iron.  I can hardly wait to see what it looks like pointing at me in a mirror.

These are both from Roughing it -

George Bemis . . . wore in his belt an old original "Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers afterward said, "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.
- Roughing It

Yet another quip-

I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had only one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our 'conductors' practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.
- Roughing It

Enjoy,

Shameless

[Mogorilla]

The hoppes pistols are decent guns I too have seen them go for ~300.    I kick myself for not buying one when I had the chance eons ago.   The kits currently being sold are not good, at least in my opinion.   The internals take a lot of work and one hammer may be a 30 lb pull and the next a 1 lb.   They can be made to shoot I am told, still trying to get mine to fire.   They can be made to look good though. 

[Patrick Henry Brown]

Check Auction Arms. There is one listed for $80.

[Drayton Calhoun]

The next to final scene in Quigly Down Under, when he tells the ticket agent his name is Roy Cobb, take a close look at the pistol the ticket agent is holding under the counter, it looks very much like the Hoppes target pistol. I kick myself for not buying the kit when it was 65.00.