If you’re going to have someone work on a kit gun, you want to see their work in advance, mostly I do my own a Brown Bess is a hard gun especially if you don‘t have experience with it. This bothers me because there’s a lot of armatures that consider themselves gunsmiths today with very little experience being an actual gunsmith, especially these hacks that do it part time as a hobby, which means their free time spent on your gun is going to be rushed and this is a disaster waiting to happen. These reenactors that decided to start part time hobby businesses take it a little too far, a reputable gunsmith is just that, a gunsmith not part time, full time.
Personally I think his website is misleading, ‘accurate and detailed’ is hardly a way to describe amateur work. The picture of his Brown Bess, isn’t really his work, its a Pedersoli lock on a modified stock that was likely copied, or even may be a Pedersoli stock, you can tell because of the wrist, butt and lock panels.
I’ve been building my own guns for a long time, I live with my mistakes, I’ve helped out some friends with repairs, but will never invest in someone’s kit unless I buy it first for myself and then sell it back to them at a premium, a REAL BIG PREMIUM TOO if its darn good. This takes all liability and places it on me, if the kit goes bad, I own I the gun. What he is doing is not the right way to go about kit builds. He should also be owning up to what ever mistakes he made in advance before he sends his completed work, ‘hey did this wrong’ do you want the gun still ? This is a very painful and costly llesson to learn, best wishes.