IMO this is an excellent "first build" and Pecatonica River is an excellent company to do business with. The owner Dick Greensides will go out of his way to give you the best quality wood at a reasonable price.
Assuming this is your first rifle from the "box of parts", I would suggest that you take advantage of a few of Dicks "extras" like installing the breech plug, installing the barrel underlugs and milling the two dovetails for the sights.
Although these can be done by yourself, there is a learning curve to them and if you have him do them it will remove some of the difficulty faced by a first time builder.
Where the information says "Stock Inletting and drilling" it is referring to the barrel channel, the lock and trigger mortices and drilling the ramrod hole. You will have to locate and create all of the other holes and threads as required.
When you get the parts, you will have to square up the barrel channel at the breech to match the back of the barrel, sand the barrel channel to improve the fit of the barrel, inlet the breech tang, bend the breech tang, clean up the lock mortise and deepen it a bit to get the proper fit with the barrel. You will also have to cut the pockets for the barrel underlugs and drill the cross pin holes for the pins that hold the barrel in place.
You will have to determine the location of the lock screw(s) and drill and tap the holes for it (them).
This goes along with locating and inletting the side plate opposite the lock.
If the gun is a flintlock, you will need to locate and drill the vent hole or drill, tap and install a vent liner.
If the gun is a percussion style you will have to locate and install the barrels side drum and the nipple. (This gun does not come with the patent breech everyone talks about with the interior flame channel. It has a simple side drum which is threaded into the side of the barrel just in front of the breech plug.)
You will have to locate, drill and tap the hole for the barrels tang screw.
If you do not pay them to install the buttplate, you will need to determine its location and cut and trim the stock for it. In any case, you will have to locate and drill the screw holes to hold it in place.
You will need to clean up the mortise for the set trigger and cut a mortise for the triggers blade thru to the locks sear arm.
You will have to inlet the trigger guard and screw it in place.
Speaking of the trigger guard and butt plate you may have to do some sanding and polishing on these items before you install them.
You will have to file/shape/sand and finish the stock.
If you buy a Green Mountain barrel, you will have to draw file it to remove the machine marks it comes with and then either brown, blue or leave "in the white" as you decide.
The Southern Rifles are quite plane but if you want them a few simple inlays or carvings are IMO not totally out of place.
Noting that all of the furniture is steel, you will probably end up browning it. If you choose to also brown the barrel allow me to be the first to tell you that only one bottle of Laurel Mountain browning solution is more than enough for the whole gun.
There are some things I've not included here but this should give you a good idea of what is required to build one of these rifles.
You will undoubtedly hear that the Siler Lock being supplied with the gun is "not the correct style" for a Southern Rifle and although this may be true, the lock is an excellent one and will give years of service.
As I've said before, building one of these "box of parts" guns is a lot of work. I figure that someone taking the time necessary to do a good job of it will end up with over 150 hours of their time in it.
In return for that time and the original cost of the parts you will have an excellent rifle like no other in the world.
PS: I started to be brief with this but the more I wrote the more I thought of.
As it turned out, this is a good read for anyone wanting to build any of these "box of parts" guns from Pecatonica River, TOTW or MBS.
