My pistol BP loads are simple, no matter the caliber. Melt the lube out of the smokeless bullet. load cartridges with BP and an unlubed bullet. Squirt some butter flavored Crisco over the first two rounds after loading the cylinder. Fire away. No cleaning needed until you are done, and then they clean easy. In 45's I use 25gr of BP, grits filler, and 200gr bullet. If you wanna go big bullets and no filler, fine, works the same way. Short pistol barrels don't need that much lube anyway. Rifle is where you start needing more lube. If I was shooting unlubed bullets with real BP in a rifle, I'd swab every couple stages probably. Depends on results at the time. With my single lube groove bullets loaded with soft lube in my rifle bullets, I never need to swab but my barrels are no longer than 20" and I'm not in a real dry climate which makes a difference.
Coffinmaker is probably taking a nap, but he'll be along to say that if you use APP then you never have to swab it anyway.
Played around a bit yesterday. Set my scale to 25 grains, and then adjusted the powder measure to dump exactly 25 grains of Goex fff. Dumped that into a shell and examined it. Kind of looked like 25 grains was not enough, so I adjusted in increments up to 30 grains, which looked like enough, but something didn't seem quite right. I then read this thread again, and saw where the 25 grains was accompanied by some filler. NOW it all made sense. I will play again today, adjust everything back to 25 grains, and then add some cream of wheat.
I may even cut a slot into the side of a compromised .45 colt casing, cover the slot with clear tape, and then I can see exactly what is happening. Once I am satisfied, I will go ahead and load a few rounds and go make some smoke. Wish I had more primers.