Howdy
I just want to comment on this business of opening up the cylinder gap. In This Cowboy's Humble Opinion, it is usually not necessary. If a gap is so small, say .002 or so, that fouling on the cylinder face begins rubbing on the butt end of the barrel, maybe a little bit more clearance is needed. But ALL the guns that I shoot Black Powder in, Real Black Powder, have their original factory gaps, none have been altered. The gaps on my Colts, clones, and Rugers all run in the vicinty of .005-.008. They all run just fine with Black Powder and Big Lube bullets, no larger barrel gaps are needed.
Now to add to this information, I have a Ruger Blackhawk convertable with a 45 Colt and 45 ACP cylinder that I bought brand spanky new way back around 1975 or so. That gun has never had anything but Smokeless run through it. I thought it would be fun to bring it to a match and shoot Black Powder through it, so I took it completely apart, and cleaned all the parts down to bare metal using laquer thinner, because that is what I had on hand. I have done this before, using either paint thinner or laquer thinner, it does not matter. You don't have to clean it with gun cleaner, or Smokeless solvent, because you are just trying to remove all chemicals from the metal and get everything down to bare metal. Any good organic solvent will work. After throroughly cleaning the entire gun, inside and out with laquer thinner, I lubed it up, inside and out with a light coating of Ballistol, and put it back together again. When I was reassembling it, I took a moment to measure the barrel cylinder gap, and was a little bit perturbed to find that the gap was only .003. That's right, .003. Pretty tight, and I thought I might get some binding and need to clean off the cylinder face a bit. Never happened. I shot the Ruger for six stages with my usual 45 Colt loads full of FFg and topped of with a PRS 250 grain Big Lube bullet. The gun shot fine, never needed any wiping down or anything, even with that tight gap.
And when I got it home, it was just as easy to clean as any of my other revolvers that I usually shoot BP in. Cleaned right up with my usual Murphy's Mix solution. No extra work needed at all.
So much for seasoning. All I needed to do was completely degrease the gun, and lube it up with Ballistol. Worked just fine, and cleaned up real easy. Perhaps the secret was in the total degreasing job, which I have done to other Smokeless guns before. But after a thorugh degreasing, and a light coating of Ballistol, my guns clean up just fine. Did the same thing to one of my Colts a few years ago. It has never seen any more Smokeless ammo since.