Flinters all the way, for me. You find a process that consistently works well (meaning, fires with every trigger pull) and yer good to go.
I attend to, and use, my flinters perhaps a tad different than most folks.
I use two rods, both with brass ferrules at one end, the other end tapered to fit down into the pipes. One rod has a jag screwed in and this rod is for leaving down the bbl with an oily patch, after the tube has been reasonably cleaned and the shooting session is over. The other rod is the worker that stays in the pipes and does the ball ramming - it has no jag and the naked tapered end does the patched ball ramming.
All jags have their concave cupped ends filled and leveled with solder - this insures that whence patched they will fit flush against the flat face of the breech plug, thus well cleaning it.
When shooting, only the piped rod is used - the other jagged cleaning rod stays back in the rifle's case. A jag and a ball worm, along with a spare flint, are in the rifle's patch box.
After blowing down the barrel to insure there's no embers left in the tube from the last shot taken, a volume measure of 3F powder is sent down to the chamber and the bbl is thumped with a hand to settle it all down nicely. IF I was concerned about loading the chamber more precisely I'd first shove a 36" brass tube down the bore and pour the powder into the tube's funnel end. This absolutely concentrates the powder in the bbl's chamber ... but this is for bench shooting and not woods walk shooting.
After pressing in the patched balled into the gun's muzzle with the handle of my rifleman's knife, the rod's tapered end does the patched ball pushing down the tube, thus it's up outta the pipes and down the tube to seat the ball. No short started used or needed. I'll bounce the rod to insure a consistent compression of patched ball on the powder charge. When the deed's done it's up outta the tube and down the pipes - no wasted time with rod twirling around.
With a patched ball seated on a powder charge, the rifle is arm cradled, a cloth rag or brass brush cleans the pan, the frizzen face, and the cutting edge of the flint. A touch hole pick is always string attached to the trigger guard and picks at the powder thru the vent to increase the powder surface area to better receive the heat of the pan flash.
The pan is about 1/3rd filled in it's center with the same 3F horn powder, (Swiss, of course!).
After the shot is taken the above process is repeated. There is no need to clean out the bbl if there is a good fit of patched ball into the bore, and the patch material (red pillow ticking) is WELL lubed with Gato Feo. It took me far too long to realize that a heavily lubed patch was the key to never needing to clean the bbl at all for the length of the shooting session and so far for at least 27 balls fired.
YMMV!
