Mako, that's a nice story on Ron Powers. Very interesting. Here is what my 37 years of shooting BP handguns has taught me: the less detritus you have on the cylinder face and going onto the cylinder pin the smoother the gun operates. We can get around this with percussion guns by slathering lube on the chamber mouths and in BP cartridge revolvers by using Big Lube style bullets that will centrifugally expel some lube into the space between the cylinder face & breech cone.
I am reminded of a friend in NCOWS who tried six or seven different Schofields using real BP and he said that the one with the tighest gap shot BP best. That's because more detritus was going down the barrel instead of blowing onto the breech face that has no elongated gas collar such as the original S&W's used.