some 44-77 questions

[Don McDowell]

Sam the only time I think the 55y would really come into play would be when dealing with bore diameter slicks. It may be to thin to give good results with bullets very far under bore diameter.
Back in the day there was apparently 3 thicknesses of paper used, thick, thin and medium. Bodine told Sharps in a letter that they needed to make their grooves a bit deeper to facilitate shooting dirty, and that he wanted his bullets no harder than 15-1 and sized so that when patched in medium weight paper that the weight of a cleaning rod would just slide the bullet down the bore.
It's become the cool thing of late to worry about paper thickness, but in actuality paper is not as reliable in thickness as other materials. The bottom line is finding a paper that will shred easily when wet or dry patched, that will allow good good accuracy.