The Premium Grail: Stonewall Creek 4-Gauge

This is the grail, and the first thing to understand about it is that you cannot simply order one. The Stonewall Creek Outfitters 4-gauge blunderbuss is the most respected true buss kit builders know of, and it is also the hardest to get - not because it is expensive, but because its central component barely exists. If you want the real thing, a coach-gun-caliber English buss built from a genuine big-bore barrel, a top-tier lock, and correct brass, this is it. You will just have to work to get on the list.

4.1 Read this first: it is not a listed product

Stonewall Creek’s current website lists rifle barrels, locks, and custom guns - and no blunderbuss page at all. There is nothing to add to a cart. The kit is built in small batches gated entirely by the availability of Ed Rayl (W.E. Ray) 4-bore brass barrels, and Rayl is essentially the sole maker of them. To buy the kit you phone Stonewall Creek and get on a waiting list, and then you wait for a barrel to exist.

The history here is sobering. In 2013, builders were putting their names on a list for the kit “when they become available.” In 2014, one builder reported waiting over a year and a half for delivery. And in January 2017, a builder who spoke with owner Troy Roope reported that Stonewall Creek then had just two blunderbuss kits in walnut plus a couple of spare Rayl barrels and stocks - and called them “likely the last of these kits.” That was nine years ago. Treat this kit as a rare, semi-custom, call-to-order item with a one-to-one-and-a-half-year lead, not something on a shelf. Confirm current price and availability with Stonewall Creek by phone before counting on it.

4.2 What it is - when you can get it

The kit is a mid-eighteenth-century civilian buss, and the parts list is why it is so well regarded:

• Barrel: an Ed Rayl 4-bore brass smoothbore. Four gauge means roughly a 1.052-inch bore - four lead balls to the pound. A 4-bore round ball is about 4 ounces, near 1,750 grains of lead. This is a true historic coach-gun size, and Rayl’s barrels are made in tiny numbers and snapped up fast whenever they surface used.
• Lock: a Jim Chambers round-face English flintlock. These are top-tier - CNC-precise from high-carbon steel, heat-treated, and famously reliable; a Chambers round-face English lock was documented firing 671 times without a misfire on ten flints. Note for accuracy: Jim Chambers Flintlocks now trades as Calvary LLC - same design, same tooling.
• Stock: a Keck precarve, offered in walnut with maple seen on some builds.
• Hardware: high-quality, correct brass castings - trigger guard, buttplate, ramrod pipes, side plate.

The last publicly cited price was around $975, from a 2017 forum discussion. Treat that as stale and indicative only; no live price is published, so the phone call settles it.

4.3 What four gauge actually means

The whole reason this kit is the grail is the bore. Put the Stonewall Creek next to the Traditions and the gap is not incremental - it is roughly eight times the projectile mass. A .54 ball is around 230 grains; the 4-bore’s ball is near 1,750. Working charges run from about 100 to 200 grains of Fg for a normal load, up to 300 to 350 grains for a heavy one, pushing four-and-a-half to five ounces of shot. As the lead photo shows, it produces a genuine fireball. Builders describe the finished gun in one word - “MASSIVE” - and note that it “goes through a lot of powder and lead but is a blast to shoot.” This is not a scaled evocation of a blunderbuss. It is the real coach-gun scale the type was built at.

4.4 The build

Stonewall Creek grades the kit “advanced,” and builders have asked why - the consensus is that the grade keeps beginners off a scarce, valuable Rayl barrel and signals that it does not just snap together. The most experienced voices are reassuring about the actual difficulty: one builder who has assembled a Rayl 4-bore buss says it is “just as easy to learn while building a blunderbuss as anything else,” because the lock inletting, trigger guard, and buttplate work are identical to a fowler. The barrel is fatter in diameter but shorter than a fowler barrel, so the main new challenge is inletting that big channel. It is a precarve kit, not a raw parts set, but it still needs real barrel-channel inletting, lock tuning, brass fitting and shaping, barrel browning, and finishing figured wood.

The companion build dive, “Stonewall Creek 4-Gauge Blunderbuss,” covers that build in full - this volume is the buyer’s-guide framing, not the bench manual. If you secure a kit, that dive is where the actual work lives.

4.5 Who it is for

The Stonewall Creek is for the maker who wants the best true buss kit that exists, has the patience to wait a year or more for a barrel, and has the bench skills - or the willingness to build them - to do a precarve big-bore justice. It is the top of the “build it yourself and build it right” heap. The only thing above it in fidelity is a full cast parts set, which is the next volume. The only thing that beats it on availability is buying finished, which is the volume after that.

Sources

Stonewall Creek Outfitters; Ed Rayl / W.E. Ray; Jim Chambers Flintlocks / Calvary LLC; Keck; American Longrifles forum; Muzzleloading Forum; Track of the Wolf.