Hubcap,
I would expect you'll do fine with your .454 casull in an Encore. I don't know what to expect from a revolver. I hope to find out once I get a revolver.
I patch for a .357 Magnum lever action rifle. Pistol magnums stand a lot to benefit from paper patching as the velocities are right around the tops for pure lead performance.
The link provided above is valuable. Also have your librarian get a copy of "The Paper Jacket" by Paul Matthews. This will be a good basic read.
However, you don't need to do a whole lot of "bookwork" before giving this a try.
Here's the best "starter" advice I've gotten that doesn't necessarily stand out in the literature.
A) Use straight plumber's lead to cast regular bullets for your gun. No special "paper patched" bullet design, except that some form of shoulderless rounded ogive tends to work better.
B) Patch it according to standard methods, and allow them to dry.
C) Run patched bullets through normal sizing die for your gun.
D) Choose a smokeless load that can safely operate at 100% loading density.
E) The grain direction in the paper does matter. How much I'm not sure, but I know that if I don't consistantly cut the patches in the same direction they don't produce a consistant jacket.
You don't need any special equipment at all. Just some good paper.
Here's a what I did to get started:
I put three wraps of paper around the bullet I intended to use. I cut a notch all the way through the layers of paper. Then I unravelled the paper. The distance between two notches is exactly 2 revolutions around the bullet.
I used this distance to make a small parallelogram template out of cereal box cardboard. I made at least one dimension of the template the distance between the two notches. The other dimension is sufficiently long enough to extend from just forward of the shoulder to about 2 diameters past the bullet base.
I use this template to cut patches from 25% cotton vellum with a sharp pocket knife.
I dampen the patches on a wet sponge. Then I roll them around the bullet as tight as possible without tearing the patches. I twist the extra paper that extends off the base of the bullet into a tight tail. Then I let them dry.
After drying I lube them with a shmeer of snoseal and run them through my Lee sizing die. Since they are flatpoints, I push 'em through tail first. Then I clip the tails off and load 'em. If the nose shape of the bullet doesn't lend itself to "tail first" sizing (S.O.P. with Lee sizing dies is nose-first) then I'd have to clip the tails before sizing.
