urbanrifleman
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I polished my latest barrel by hand and I am very satisfied with it, and it was really quite easy and did not take very long at all. I would say it looks at least as good as the barrel done on a polishing lathe done by my smith in Texas on one of my previous barrels. This barrel was not even finished as most are today in 220-320 grit (my new Brux blank is gorgeous, this one was not). This one was quite unfinished from Krieger and the flutes had been soda blasted.
I covered the chamber end threads with tightly wrapped masking tape. I put the barrel in my barrel vise. Then I had 400 grit wet and dry sandpaper, I used a full sheet of paper and folded in thirds along the long dimension. Then I sanded the barrel using a shoe polish rag motion over half the barrel, and this covered roughly half the diameter as the paper gets wrapped very closely around the barrel. I then turned the barrel three times, rotating 1/3 the way and repeated. This went very, very quickly (I was very surprised). Then I removed the barrel from the vise and flipped it around and did the other half. Repeat with 600. Then you could repeat with 1200 or 800 but I did not. The barrel now looked quite beautiful and you could stop here if you wanted.
Next, I used this:
https://www.harborfreight.com/2-inch-x-2-1-2-half-inch-tapered-buff-65001.html
Attached to my drill. It costs about 4 bucks and I figure it might be a use once or twice deal, but I can live with that, I used a small amount of Flitz on the barrel and polished the barrel lengthwise using the polish and the drill in high speed, and did half the length, rotate, polish half the length, rotate, etc etc Flip it around and do the other half, and it was done. Hose it down with penetrating oil and it is pretty much done.
