Kibler Rifled Muskets?

[Smokey Plainsman]

With the price of what the Italians are wanting for a repro Civil War era rifled musket and with their spotty availability, do you think that someone like Kibler could do well by introducing a kit for such a gun?

With the NSSA and lots of Civil War reenactors, I think having an economical and easy to build kit option that would be excellent in quality and attention to detail would be peaches.

I know Jim would do it right. I imagine he could give them the correct progressive depth rifling and fix all the historical inaccuracies of the Italian guns.

I know his next gun is going to be a smoothbore flintlock fowler. That’s a great next step. But after that I think he needs to diversify if he wants to grow the business and off the top of my head I think a rifled musket would be a great seller.

Thoughts?

 

[BoomStick]

Always welcome more options for quality arms. Kibler would certainly do a better kit than most others out there, and better than most finished factory guns.

But they're better because of the development time required. Diversification is good, but not if it compromises the existing business or if new product is not of good quality. Given Kibler's focus on precision and quality, not likely we'll see more than one new gun per year...add the civil war repros to the list of requests, behind the hawken-style or even adding left hand variants of his existing guns.

But only Jim knows what's next.

 

[FlinterNick]

With the price of what the Italians are wanting for a repro Civil War era rifled musket and with their spotty availability, do you think that someone like Kibler could do well by introducing a kit for such a gun?

With the NSSA and lots of Civil War reenactors, I think having an economical and easy to build kit option that would be excellent in quality and attention to detail would be peaches.

I know Jim would do it right. I imagine he could give them the correct progressive depth rifling and fix all the historical inaccuracies of the Italian guns.

I know his next gun is going to be a smoothbore flintlock fowler. That’s a great next step. But after that I think he needs to diversify if he wants to grow the business and off the top of my head I think a rifled musket would be a great seller.

Thoughts?

It really depends on what business plan’s Jim intends to pursue. The reinactor market does not really demand expensive high quality military muskets, outside of the reinactor market i don’t see a lot of high demand for military style muskets.

Most of the locks sent to me are restoration projects and older rifle and fowler locks.

Personally i think there’s greater market demand for hunting rifles of all styles, they’re also the easiest and simplest to produce in terms of the costs and materials. E.G. getting barrel production is very slow currently, as there are not many large shops that can produce large batches.

For example a Second Model Brown Bess Musket uses a lot of lumber, brass and steel. It is a material heavy project, the cost to reproduce a short land brown bess parts would be more expensive than say a rifle which Jim probably can sell many more of.

Pedersoli’s short land brown bess is not an actual copy of an authentic brown bess, it is a 7/8 scale version of a short land brown bess for many reasons one major reason being materials costs. It’s a cost efficiently produced brown bess style musket, they can make a lot of them this way. If they could change anything about it i would change the markings on the lock, reduce the caliber of the barrel to around 20 gauge and reshape the butt stock with more drop, now you have a ‘quasi’ light infantry fusil.

If Pedersoli actually copied an authentic shortland it would cost more lumber, more steel and more brass bringing their production and sale prices up much higher than they currently are. A finished brown bess sells for around 1600, would now be priced around 2-2500 or 1500-2000 in kit form.

I could see Jim making a type of Brown Bess Style fusil which Jim Chambers offers, its smaller in scale but the same basic design patterns.

While i think it would be awesome to see a Kibler brown bess, i don’t think we ever will. Personally I’d rather see a Kibler Tulle gun or British fusil or even a northwest trade gun.

 

[gemmer]

I don't see Jim getting into the military arms part of muzzleloading. His background is in sporting arms. You have several options. First, Go on the N-SSA website forum and read up on the most authentic repros and look for one on GB or at gun shows. Then, send it to Lodgewood and have it defarbed. Send the barrel to Bobby Hoyt and have him put a progressive depth liner in it. OR, buy an original. If you go original, do your home work and don't buy one on line without a firm return policy and top notch reviews of the seller. Even with that you'll probably have dodo some work on it. Caveat Emptor. I started buying and shooting originals 20 years ago and even if Kibler put out a rifled musket kit, I wouldn't buy one. Full disclosure I have his SMR and Colonial and think they're top notch.