What's in the Kit: Rayl Barrel, Chambers Lock, Keck Precarve & Brass

The reason the Stonewall Creek buss is the best-regarded true blunderbuss kit is that every major component is a serious piece in its own right. This is not an importer’s box of soft castings; it is four premium parts that a knowledgeable builder would otherwise assemble one at a time, gathered into a single mid-eighteenth-century civilian coach-gun package. This volume walks the contents.

2.1 The Rayl 4-bore brass barrel — the heart, and the bottleneck

The barrel is an Ed Rayl (W.E. Ray) 4-bore brass smoothbore, with a bore of roughly 1.052 inches — a true 4-gauge, four round balls to the pound. It is the defining part of the whole kit and the reason the kit exists at all.

Two things about it drive everything downstream. First, it is brass, not steel. That single fact changes the finishing story completely — you polish and patinate brass and brown any steel furniture, but you do not blue a brass bore (Volume 6 covers this in full, because it is the most commonly misunderstood point of the build). Second, Rayl is essentially the sole maker of these barrels. They are turned in tiny numbers, they are chronically sought-after, used ones are snapped up the moment they surface, and the availability of the entire kit rises and falls with Rayl’s output. When forum builders say the kit is “gated,” this is what they mean: Stonewall Creek can only assemble as many buss kits as there are Rayl barrels to build them on.

A practical consequence: the barrel is large in diameter but comparatively short — shorter than a typical fowler barrel. That geometry is why the barrel-channel inletting, and not the lock or furniture, is the one genuinely new challenge of the build (Volume 4).

2.2 The Chambers round-face English lock

The lock is a Jim Chambers round-face English flintlock — the same maker’s lock the SCO kits have specified for years. Get the naming right in your own notes: Jim Chambers Flintlocks is now operating as Calvary LLC. The company changed hands, but the locks are built on the same design and the same tooling, so a “Chambers round-face English” and a “Calvary round-face English” are the same lock.

This is a flintlock, and a very good one. Chambers locks are designed and precision-made — CNC-cut components in high-carbon steel, properly heat-treated — and they have a reputation as fast, hard, reliable sparkers. The number that gets quoted is a documented run of a Chambers round-face English lock firing 671 times on ten flints without a single misfire. Volume 3 is devoted to why that matters and how to tune the lock to that standard; for now, know that the ignition on this kit is not a compromise part.

2.3 The Keck precarve stock — and what “precarve” means

The stock is a Keck precarve, widely reported as Stonewall Creek’s buss-stock source. Walnut is the offered wood — the 2017 batch was described as “available in walnut” — and maple has been seen on builds as well, which matters a great deal for the finishing volume, since figured maple is exactly where aqua fortis earns its reputation.

The critical word is precarve, not raw parts set. The stock arrives already shaped to the buss profile, with the major mortices roughed in — you are not starting from a plank as you would with a full castings set. But precarve is emphatically not drop-in. You will still cut the barrel channel to the specific Rayl barrel, inlet the tang, bed the lock to the plate, and let in the furniture. Precarve saves you the shaping and the layout; it does not save you the fitting.

2.4 The brass — correct castings, not filler

The furniture is a set of high-quality, correct brass castings and hardware appropriate to a mid-1700s English civilian buss: trigger guard, buttplate, ramrod pipes (thimbles), and side plate. “Correct” is the operative word — this is the furniture that distinguishes a real buss build from the cheap import route. Builders repeatedly describe Stonewall Creek as offering the only buss kit of real quality and substance precisely because it pairs a Rayl barrel and a Chambers lock with correct brass, rather than pot-metal stand-ins.

You will still clean the castings up — investment-cast brass comes with a light casting skin, sprue stubs, and mold-line flash — and you will bench-fit and shape each piece to the wood. That work is fowler-standard, not exotic (Volume 4).

2.5 What the box is, in one line

Put together, the Stonewall Creek 4-gauge kit is a premium precarve blunderbuss: a Rayl 4-bore brass barrel, a Chambers (Calvary) round-face English flintlock, a Keck precarve walnut or maple stock, and correct brass castings — assembled into a single semi-custom, call-to-order package. It is not the cheapest way into a blunderbuss, and it is not the least handwork. It is the way to end up with a period-correct, big-bore coach gun that is right in size, right in lock, and right in furniture.

2.6 A note on completeness

Because these kits ship in small hand-assembled batches, do not assume the exact contents of your kit match a forum thread from years ago to the last screw. Confirm with Stonewall Creek at the time you order what is and isn’t included — touch-hole liner, ramrod, small hardware — so you can source anything omitted (Track of the Wolf carries the compatible Chambers/Calvary locks and brass and ramrod hardware) before you start rather than mid-build.

Sources

Stonewall Creek Outfitters; American Longrifles forum; Muzzleloading Forum; Track of the Wolf.