Hi,
Several of you comment that Jim and Catherine's kits are blank canvases for the artist. That is only true if you accept the architecture of the gun. Unlike painting, the gun as canvas is not neutral and is part and parcel of the artistic expression. There are plenty of guns out there on which the maker embellished them without considering the canvas and they are routinely awkward looking and ugly. The easier the Kibler's make their kits to assemble, the less flexibility you have to customize it in any way except decoration and embellishment, and even with that you are limited by the architecture of the gun. Many of you await the fowler kit. As I understand the gun will represent a good quality British trade gun or lower grade fowler from the mid-18th century. Would decorating it with silver wire inlay and high end engraving look right? No. During that time a high quality gun would almost always have a standing breech, likely one with a hump, barrel keys not pins, elegant side plate and trigger guard, not the kinds used on trade guns. If all of those components are fully inlet for you, you may have few choices but to build a trade or lower quality fowler. Jim and Catherine chose that style gun because it has the highest marketing potential in the US and should be a good business choice for them. I know it will be wildly popular as it should, but as a "blank canvas" for historically correct artistic decoration it will have its limits. Here is a Kibler Colonial that I built for a client detailing the lengths I went to modifying it to be more "Germanic" and less "English", more "Lancastrian" and less "Virginian" .
https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/kibler-kit-assembly-and-carving.133549/
dave