POTD: Beautiful and Rare Henry Pieper Seven Shot Volley Rifle
Sam.S 05.05.22
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a rather superb and beautiful volley rifle made by the brain of Henry Pieper. Pieper was a fairly prolific inventor in the early 20th century and a lot of his work gets tossed to the wayside. A volley gun is a gun made to shoot multiple shots by a single trigger pull. Yes, like a shotgun, but instead of a single dedicated barrel, it is one master barrel housing multiple barrels. This particular one has seven barrels and since they are all rifled this is technically a volley rifle. This one shoots seven rounds of 22 rimfire ammunition. These would have mainly been used for waterfowl hunting since it was thought the rifled barrels would aid in accuracy.
“Manufactured in the late 19th century in Belgium, this unique rolling block volley rifle (sometimes referred to as a goose gun) has a seven round barrel cluster housed in a single iron sleeve which is 1 inch across. The barrel cluster gauges at .22 caliber. These chambers all fire at the same time, thus propelling the lead bullets simultaneously toward their target. The rifle has a blade front sight and a two leaf rear sight (one folding, the other fixed) on a solid matte rib which is marked “H. PIEPER Bte LIEGE” behind the rear sight. The hammer, lever, breech block and receiver are casehardened with a matte type engraving on the receiver. Proofs are stamped on the left side of the receiver. The nicely figured pistol grip stock and forearm are checkered with a flat steel buttplate. Included with the rifle is a speed loader.”
Lot 1251: Scarce Henry Pieper Seven Shot Volley Rifle. (n.d.). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved May 5, 2022, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/59/1251/scarce-henry-pieper-seven-shot-volley-rifle.
