Keith, I suspect Doug and Tony Treadwell have had a few interesting conversations up in Heaven. I know Doug and Tony exchanged a lot of information while Tony was learning about case coloring and gun finish in general. I still admire the effort Tony put into learning finishing techniques and how to bring these old guns back to a state of beauty.
I understand why most people do not polish like Doug did. It had to take him three times as long to do it. Then the rust cycles take a lot more of them to work. A 320 finished surface gives the solution a good "rough" surface to bite into. After all we are talking about rust and where better to do that than a rough surface? All those microscopic grooves and pits to increase the surface area. But you are also right that you can not get a deep mirror finish starting out with such a rough surface. Conventional wisdom in this case is just good enough not as god as you can.
