If you want a heirloom piece the traditions kits are kind of lame. They arent historicaly accurate and really dont look that flattering. The traditions kentucy rifle has a two piece stock with a brass washer that makes me want to puke. Not the fault of the assembler but just speaks to the
Quality of the kit. For 299 you are not getting a great rifle. Lymans kits are much nicer for 450. The lymans kits also go together with less headache. The old tompson center kits arent to bad either. Most guns up until the mid1830's would have been flintlock not percussion. Even though the percussion cap technology was avalable as early as the 1820's. Many flintlock rifles would have been converted around the 1830's as well.
There are some extremly high quality kits out there that will produce a historically accurate and beautiful rifle. I made .36 caliber squirrel rifle using jim kiblers southern mountian rifle kit. My next muzzleloader will either be a 16 gauge fowler i build using a black walnut stock blank or track of the wolf full stock hawken kit.
The main differance between building from a blank vs a kit is the hard part of mortising the lock and drilling the ramrod entry are done for you. There are lots of muzzleloader smiths in southern ohio that will be happy to mortise your lock and drill the entry for a small fee. Kits still require you to do all the inletting and fitting. At minimum you will need inletting black, inletting scrapers, scrapper cards, drill bits, a drill press, and a main spring vise. if choose to do any carving you will need knives, chisels and gouges. You may also choose to do silverwire work and will need punches and cutters. I poured a pewter nose cap on my rifle as well.