Seeing a number of folks feel you shouldn't bother to remove it, is there something that can be applied to the stainless before hand to reduce the adhesion of the residue?
Yeah.
Shoot Black Powder. I never get carbon rings on the face of my revolver cylinders that I shoot with Black Powder cartridges. What fouling is there washes off easily with warm water.
I always tell folks that once they have enough revolvers, they will stop worrying about the carbon rings on the face of the cylinder.
Obviously, you don't have enough revolvers yet.
What is happening is at the moment the bullet leaves the cartridge case, a tiny portion of the base of a lead bullet atomizes from the effect of the hot exhaust gasses. As the bullet passes the barrel/cylinder gap, the atomized lead along with carbon from the exhaust gasses gets blasted out the barrel/cylinder gap. Because the opening of the barrel/cylinder gap is so narrow, the ejecta gets blasted out at very high velocity. As it strikes the cylinder face it leaves a perfect imprint the same diameter as the barrel forcing cone. The reason this fouling is so much more difficult to remove than the ordinary fouling left behind in the chambers and bore is the fact that it was blasted onto the cylinder face at such high velocity.
You may have heard of the Greek legend of Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll a boulder up a mountainside, only to have it roll down again the next day so he had to do it over and over for eternity.
It is the same with cleaning carbon rings off the face of a cylinder. It is a laborious and futile exercise.
Buy some more revolvers and stop worrying about the carbon rings.
