The thinest cigarette paper is probably .001". Some of our suppliers sell .0005 mylar shim stock that I prefer. In a pinch I've used supermarket plastic bag material as the thinest is .0005" and the thicker is .001". It tends to curl up though and you have to keep cutting new ones but the price is right. I cut the feelers to about 1/8 -1/4" wide and tape, or glue, them to paper clips or pipe cleaners. This allows me to bend the tool to reach hard to reach areas.
The tone hole tools are actually dent rollers designed to work inside the body and bring up the low spots by pressure and rolling sort of like burnishing. This is a variation of the dent ball and rebound technique. Curt had an excellent article on the musicedic.com website about this dent ball under tone hole method a while back that may be still up. I haven't used the Jim Thomas rollers but I have used his flute tone hole tool that works on the same principle.
The reso pad problem is that they are limited to the Conn sizes. The drum head idea inspired David Straubinger and is a part of his design patents for his flute pad. If someone starts making a new pad design stretching the skin over a frame in a different way than the Conn resos, they may hear from Straubinger's lawyers. If someone would make the Conn reso style in more sizes it would be nice. No one would buy them without them being in fashion, and they are already quite old fashioned. Much marketing, forum posting, and mental anguish would have to be involved. Just look at the history of the Jim Schmidt pads and the RooPads. And the Roo is a conventional pad! Ask Curt or Jim if they would want to start from scratch again? Now if Jim would just do to his sax pad what his latest flute pad improvements embody then... or if Straubinger would make a sax pad. I've asked both of these guys in the past, maybe it's time to bug them again!
Stickiness is more a pad treatment issue. The companies for the past 20 yrs or so sought waterproof and consistent coloring but ended up with all the stickiness talk that goes on now. They haven't fix the problem. The only tan pad I am aware of that is treated and doesn't have this problem is the J. L. Smith pad that they came out with last year, and it is the only tan pad that I consider using in my shop. Stickiness is also related to surface contact area, the less the better.
David