Heavy
Not always. Depends mostly on the individual gun. Revolvers where sometimes 9lb.
A pepperbox with any meaningful caliber is going to be a) heavy as hell since multiple long barrels, which also makes them innacurate b) innacurate as hell because short barrels, c) both, because shitty production leads to solid pieces of metal.
inaccurate (thanks to being heavy)
This is true, but pistol range aswell as, well, look at muskets. Horrible accuracy there too. useless from any range besides direct application to forehead (thanks to being inaccurate)
Again, muskets, aswell as it being a pistol. They have short range.
Except pepperbox innacurate is not "will not hit a plate from 10 meters", it's "will hit everything but the plate from 5 meters, including the shooter".
frequent chainfires (thanks to being cheap as fuck)
They often had less chainfires, due to the fact that they arent enclosed into a small space (like typical revolvers). Also, designing ways to get around that problem is rather simple. Like including a shield.
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
less weight turning it into wrist-breaking volley gun
Aha! He admits weight is less, which makes his comments about inaccuracy and lack of range due to weight reflect poorly on revolvers!
I what. I never said anything about weight. The problem is the simultaneous explosion of multiple charges, which turns any pepperbox into a fucking volley gun which is comparable in recoil with a fucking hand cannon. Add that they're usually unwieldy due to being cheap, and there you go, broken wrists everywhere.
Also because I'm sceptic about going all-out scrooge (with pepperboxes being literally poor-man revolvers) on guns we give to our soldiers.
So yer one of the people who would rather give 100 people 10 fantastic guns instead of each getting a good gun? Good to know.
As far as I'm concerned, 10 trained officers with fantastic guns is much better than 100 idiots which will kill each other with their horrible weapons worth of suicide bomber.
Also that's just how British Empire rolls.
Ok, reading the wiki on pepperboxes makes my statement look idiotic(a pepperbgox is actually safer in the event of a chainfire, since dedicated barrels would mean it simply turns into an impromptu volley gun), but the major flaws that make it impractical for military use are:
Except no. Pepperbox may be kind of safer compared to early, shitty and cheap revolvers without some way of preventing chainfires, but they're also much more suspectible to it. I know the idea of unloading six or so shoots into one guy in fraction of a second is somewhat cool, but considering that you're left without weapon and broken wrist afterward...