Grease...

[NickHarvey]

I use a Castrol high melting point grease from a syringe with a needle from an inkjet refill kit cut down, just to control the flow. If you do try this though, choose a syringe that has a thin ring of rubber around the circumference and not a full cap over the end of the plunger. The solvents in the grease will expand the rubber and make it unusable after a couple of weeks. The type I've been using has worked reliably for more than 2 years now. Using the Castrol grease pot makes it easy to fill as the syringe is a near perfect fit over the hole in the plate. I've tried specialist lube (look at http://www.stifters-gunflints.de/ - although the site is in German, Guenter, the owner speaks excellent English and is very helpful) the grease works very well and is a LOT cheaper!

As for the fouling, it seems to depend as much on the gun as what you put through it. I started shooting a Pietta competition (and took the British record of 100 with it) and it would need the cylinder pin to be hammered out after two details. I changed to a Hege Remington with the same load and there isn't anything like the amount of debris blown back into the mechanism. It'll do two or three consecutive details and not require any force to dismantle it. I also shoot an original Remington (17 grains Swiss 2 compared to 15 Swiss 2 in the repro) and that does foul more. It's not as bad as the Pietta was but noticable so it's possibly down to engineering tolerances.

I agree with the previous posts that the grease isn't absolutely necessary for preventing chain fires. In my case, there's a very thick layer of semolina on top of the powder but I'd rather have belt and braces on this one! The other thing to do is look at the face of the cylinder after firing the first chamber and see how much grease is actually left. I doubt you'll see much!

On a different note, I have a lot of small spare parts for the Pietta revolver (screws, springs, cylinder pins etc) if anyone needs anything, drop me a pm and I'll give details.

[air-tech]

I agree with the previous posts that the grease isn't absolutely necessary for preventing chain fires.

+1 on that - it's all about lubrication.

In my case, there's a very thick layer of semolina on top of the powder

I used to use that but the balls tended to self-jam, a ring of compressed semo would form in the chambers and then any further balls would not want to seat - so I turned to polenta (ground maize) - just as useful, slightly less fine and no ring issues. In my (also Hege - very nice!) remy I put the powder in, then filled the cyl to overflowing with polenta, (using a gearbox oil litre container with the extendible spout - a second's job) gave it a twirl to make it flush, and found that the balls would compress perfectly to just a smidgen below flush.

HTH