This is a rambling mess on how I found Kibler long rifles. I have not completed the rifle yet, but I made it through the part I was worried about the most the fitting of the parts to the wood. I really just wanted something to shoot. I loved my old black powder Hawkens rifle. I was fun to shoot and was cheap to shoot. It became un-shootable over time because of issues. With all the resent shortages in other shooting areas I started looking at black powder again. I was leaning towards the old percussion, then I found out percussion caps were in short supply. So it thought OK flintlocks, you just need black powder and a flint. So I started looking into already made flintlocks, which I could not find any. So I started looking into kits. On YouTube there where so many videos of flintlocks being so hard to make work that I second guess the flintlock. Then I came across a video explaining the issues with flintlocks was cheap imports. That started my path to looking into American made flintlocks. Which there are none that can be found that are ready made. So I looked into easy kits which I found something with Jim Chambers kits and one of the searches brought me to Jim Kibler's long rifle, because they used Jim Chamber's lock a while back. I saw videos of other kits using Jim Chamber's lock and they looked like more than I wanted to tackle, but I saw a video of the Kibler Woods runner and thought that is something I could build. So I put an order in and started watching all the videos on building Kibler rifles so I would be ready when the kit arrived. After watching enough videos, I had enough confidence to build one of the other kits offered by Kibler while waiting for my Woods Runner. I opted to the SMR in 36 caliber.
First thing is the kit has improved over time and it much easier to build than the videos or 2-3 years ago. For one thing the touch liner is already installed in the barrel. Also the Jim Chamber's cast lock has been replaced with the Jim Chamber's CNC lock that almost drops into place. I only had to scrape a couple of places to get it to fit. The barrel for mine dropped into place. I could see hand work on the stock where the team had fit the barrel to the stock before shipping, which is I think something new. There is no more drilling and tapping of the lock on the SMR as well because of the new lock and the parts lining up so well. The hardest part of my kit was fitting the trigger guard which was a little long at the back. I am not a wood working person, so I took micro steps, which even doing that did not take that long. Then I had issue with the ram rod pipe next to the inlet of the stock. I thought it was seated deep enough into the wood but it was not and it caused the ram rod to bind. I would recommend that you try the ram rod before drilling the hole for the pin, that would have told me it was not in deep enough. It was only a $6 mistake and Kibler is so fast with ordering parts that it only took 2 days to be back up and running. Another plus of an American company.
Other improvements with the kits. They have a drilling guide now included with the kit!. I used the guide and drilled the smaller hole then removed the part and drilled the final hole for the pin to fit through.
A point of reference a person at work gave me a imported kit to work on for him to get practice on before I build my "expensive" Kibler kit. In a side-by-side comparison there I would say hands down the best kit was the Kibler kit. The lock on the imported kit seemed like a toy with a coil spring hidden behind the lock. I would not trust that lock to function for hunting. The machining of the inlets of the imported kit looked like it was quickly chiseled just to make parts fit. (That was what made my first black powder rifle fail, the wood split because of the ruff inlet areas.) Also the wood on the import is like a club compared to the stock of the Kibler rifle. There is no real detail, the imported kit is just a smooth unshaped piece of wood. You will be amazed at the Kibler SMR wood when you see it for the first time! It is an incredible long slender stock with much detail. The Kibler stock is twice as long and half the thickness to the import. The Kobler trigger is so much nicer as well. The import seemed like it was stamped out and the Kibler was precision CNC part. The import has a much shorter barrel that again seems like a club compared to the swamped Kibler barrel.
I thought I was paying more to American made and more reliable. I feel like this is a much better value and it is a much easier kit than the imported kits. If you have the money this is better value.
After seeing the SMR kit when it arrived, I could not get over how nice it was. I ordered a second SMR kit and a Colonial kit as well. I am not a kit builder, but the Kibler kits are amazing, and the videos on building the rifles are great.
