I grease all my round balls long before the shoot and carry them in tobacco tins. I do this by rolling each one by hand [while watching the TV] so I get to do something useful while doing something useless. This is what they look like [.454 for Remington Army on left, .380 on right for Navy Colts]
As you can see I cast my own balls also. The grease goes opposite the sprue cut although I believe up or down would make no difference. .380 is Uberti's recommended size for their .36 revolvers and the 5 thou oversize makes them nice and tight but I have used .375s with no problems.
The consistency of the mix is critical. It is about the hardness of plasticene so it will soften in your hand but not melt. My mix is just beeswax and Paraffin oil. Brasspounder [SASS #1381] has found olive oil to be just as effective. The mix ratio is about 9:1 beeswax:oil.
I use them in Remington Army's and Navy Colt reproductions and I shoot all day without any apparent binding up even in the Remington which are apparently a little more prone to binding. I do use a little Lithium soap grease on the cylinder pin at the start of the day but do nothing the rest of the time but load and shoot. Load time is a casual 50 seconds per revolver because there is no fiddley greasing step. There is also no grease splatter in the holster and no grease leaving the chamber due to recoil.
Accuracy is near perfect. On testing my Remington Army on a rest I get a ragged hole at 15 meters [16 yards] with 24 grains Swiss FF. Accuracy from the Navy Colts is equally impressive.
Powder contamination was my main concern but as I mentioned the grease is quite hard [It would probably be more precise to call it wax] I expect that the top layer of powder is affected, but there is a lot in there and providing it does not liquify I can't imagine contamination would extent much past one or two layers of grains.
I am not claiming it to a be perfect method - I make no claims at all. My intention was just to share what I do, get some feedback and share some experience. I am so happy with the results from my method, I see no need to look for alternatives.
Good luck and happy shooting.
