All good infomation here but
I don’t use felt pads but even if I did I would still grease the end of the ball. When you shoot many rounds through the gun like I do at cowboy shoots your doing a lot of reloading and some times power gets in places other than the chamber and it’s hard to clean off. Any loose powder will fire when the gun is set off and having seen one gun set off two chamber at the same time and having been the recipient of the lead slivers I can guarantee you that you don’t want any thing to do with multiple fires.
I would recommend you use some form of grease even if you do use pads. I agree that Crisco works very well but it’s not easy to use and messy. There are many different kinds of grease available and I find that a company that makes “spitball” and “Spitpatch” work well and can be found in most gun stores that handle BP. Its much easer to use becouse it comes in a Toothpaste like tube.
If you want to stay traditional that’s fine but I can’t find any bear grease so I use spitball.
OH one more thing,,,,, there is one other advantage in using some kind of grease,,,,,,,,,
It make a lot more smoke and that’s cool,,, lets face it, if you didn’t want the smoke you wouldn’t be going to all the trouble using a smoke poll would you?