first post. thinking of first kit. fowler questions.

[bob in the woods]

Amen to everything Mike said.  You need to decide what you want the gun for. Mine is a hunting gun. It throws a lot of shot and the ball is large . It's dropped everything I've hunted with one shot.  If I was mainly shooting targets with a round ball, I'd go with a 28, or maybe a 20      One of the reasons the 20 is so popular is that it fits that middle ground so well.  But it's not the best for fowling. It will do, but the 10 is better.......a lot better.   If you switch barrels on the same gun, then one will be heavier than it needs to be , since the profiles are the same.

[killerD]

haha...thanks for the input guys. I'm just trying to look under every rock until I find the gun that wants me!!!

The tulle definitely isn't for me. But its the first kit I saw that had a 16 ga option. I'm still looking.

[James Rogers]

Another option.... buy a 16 bore Colerain "Griffin" barrel 42" and have someone like Dave Keck at Knob Mountain put that barrel in a piece of wood and profile it to one of his many patterns that work for you. Get a Chambers lock and some correct hardware and go from there.

[killerD]

James,

Thanks for the reply. I'll do a bit of research in that direction. I'm not sure if I'm up to the task doing much more than some final inletting and finishing. But getting the barrel inlet at knob mountain may work.

[Mike Brooks]

James,

Thanks for the reply. I'll do a bit of research in that direction. I'm not sure if I'm up to the task doing much more than some final inletting and finishing. But getting the barrel inlet at knob mountain may work.

Unfortunately, there is alot more to building a kit than final inletting and finishing.

[oldtravler61]

Mike is right. Even the best kits. Require quite a bit of work. My  two cents. Decide  exactly what you want the gun for. Handle an shoot as many as you can. But take a word of advice. Don't buy a kit that you have not checked out an I don't mean looking at it in a catalog or pictures online. It will save you alot of grief. IMHO

[killerD]

I hear you guys. The main goal is to figure out what "quite a bit of work" is by actually doing it...and from there I'll know if I want to do more builds in the future. And I wish I had an outlet to play with flintlocks, but I don't at the moment. I'm not really sure if there's any other way for me to get a kit other then seeing pictures online (or flying to the east coast, unless there's a option in Oklahoma or Texas I've missed). So its looking like a chambers NE fowler is going to be the trick.

[Mike Brooks]

I hear you guys. The main goal is to figure out what "quite a bit of work" is by actually doing it...and from there I'll know if I want to do more builds in the future. And I wish I had an outlet to play with flintlocks, but I don't at the moment. I'm not really sure if there's any other way for me to get a kit other then seeing pictures online (or flying to the east coast, unless there's a option in Oklahoma or Texas I've missed). So its looking like a chambers NE fowler is going to be the trick.

Actually, most of us that build these things wonder why we ever built kits when we started. I suppose a block of wood looks pretty intimidating......

[killerD]

I definitely would like to get to that point. I have wittled a bow out of a stave of osage with a draw knife...But at the moment I just don't have the tools, or the space for the tools to do much gross shaping of the wood.  ( I'm trying to do most of this in an apartment).