Originally Posted by
Multigunner
You might want to look up information on the use of discs of beeswax compound used bewtween the over the charge card and bullet of .450 and larger ammunition for Maxim guns.
They used a fairly thick disc of solid wax. The formula for the Beeswax compound is in a treatise on ammunition I have in PDF, I can dig it up if you like.
Besides the Beeswax itself they added Swedish Pitch, from pine or fir trees, Russian Tallow, and resin.
I wondered about the Russian tallow being described as the best for such purposes and went digging deeper. I found that in Russian they fed the cattle dried beets during long cold spells, this had an effect on the chemical makeup of the fat cells which in turn had an effect on the qualities of tallow made from the fat. Now days beets have become fairly common as a winter cattle feed, so could be the same type of tallow is available from other sources.
The Beewax compound had a fair resistence to tropical summer heat, so it may be what you need.
Also it would seem to me that a Colt style front loader revolver reloaded by use of spare loaded cylinders would have a number of advantages over the single action cartridge revolvers of that period.
When swapping out cylinders wiping the arbor pin would be natural, ridding the gun of the worst of the fouling. If worse came to worse the locking latch could be left sligthl;y loose to give more of a gap.
Reloading using spare preloaded cylinders can be cumbersome on the move but still easier and much faster than extracting six empties and reloading one at a time through the gate. Of course few would have more than one or two spare cylinders to use.
Using paper cartridges and a capper reloading a C&B revolver is near as fast as a cartridge revolver, since no empty cases are left to be extracted after firing.