[tpelle]

I agree with the previous post about not using any sort of grease over the balls in the chamber. This is usually recommended as a means of preventing chain-fires, with a supposed secondary benefit of keeping the fouling in the barrel soft and easy to clean.

I tried this myself, and the grease was pretty much either blown or melted away after the first shot, and all you ended up with was a messy, greasy revolver.

Regarding keeping the fouling soft, first, my practice has been, when packing up to leave the range after a shooting session, to spray the bore and the cylinders down with "Moose Milk" (a 50/50 mixture of Ballistol mineral oil and water). My pistols always clean up easily at home using plain old hot water.

Regarding the chain-fires, I have become convinced that most if not all chain-fires result from either poorly-fitting caps that either fall off under recoil, or that have to be pinched to stay on (leaving channels up each side of the cap between the cap skirt and the nipple, permitting flash gasses to travel up inside an unfired cap and ignite the priming compound). Properly-fitting caps are critical, and the shooter either has to find caps that fit the nipple cones, or select and stick with one size and brand of cap - they are all different - and modify the nipple cones to fit.

FWIW, I use CCI #10's because they seem to be readily available by the carton lot, and I like the long skirt that they have as they seem to stay on the nipples better. I do sometimes have to - if the nipples have a lot of cone-shaped taper to them - remove the nipples from my revolvers, chuck the base in my drill press, and reduce the taper a little using a file held against the nipple as it is spun in the drill press.

Of course you should also make sure that the balls or bullets that you are loading seal tightly in the chamber, and the best way of doing that is to select balls or bullets that shave off a continuous ring of lead when being pressed in.

When charging the cylinder, you want to make sure that, when the ball or bullet is pressed in over the powder, there is no air gap between the ball or bullet and the powder. If the loading ram is unable to press the ball in sufficiently far, then you should use some sort of filler - like cream-of-wheat - to take up the space. A significant air gap can cause catastrophic pressure spikes on firing, and cause the cylinder to blow apart. But, as stated earlier, the cream-of-wheat or other filler can possibly help to prevent the possibility of chain-fires should hot gasses enter an unfired chamber from the front.

I also avoid any sort of "normal" gun oil. I had cleaned my old 1860 Army after shooting it last several years ago, and lubricated the lock work with whatever oil du jour that I had laying around. Recently, when I got it out again, I disassembled it because the works felt gummy and found the lockwork pieces coated with nasty tar-like deposits. (Perhaps I hadn't cleaned it as thoroughly as I should have, and just dripped the oil in before putting it away.) Now I use Crisco as a "grease" on things like the cylinder arbor and the threads of any screws or the nipples, and Ballistol as a general lube and rust-preventative.