For blued guns nothing can be done to improve the appearance short of a total strip, re-polish and refinish.
Attempting to polish out scratches just removes the bluing down to bare metal.
Gun bluing is not a coating, it's a method of coloring metal.
To remove a scratch will remove the coloring.
Stainless can be reworked by expert polishing since there is no surface finish.
Most gun makers these days can't devote the time and skilled worker to do polishing like on the old Colt and S&W guns.
Polishing is as much an art as a skill and takes time to develop the skill and time to do a good polish job.
That up's the price in an already highly competitive market.
A major part of the art-skill is the ability for the polisher to be able to keep flats flat and without ripples, sharp edges and corners even, and transition areas like where the flat side of a slide transitions to the rounded slide top.
Those areas are the ones that inexpert refinishers botch up by not using the proper polishing equipment, and never developing the skills needed to do it right.
A bad blue job is easily recognized by the failure to keep surfaces even, and under the nice dark bluing the metal looks like a bar of soap.
The people who can develop the art-skills don't work for minimum wage and are often the most highly paid employees.
To give a standard firearm a well polished finish for the bluing would cost enough to cause most buyer to choose a cheaper cost gun.
A good example is Colt's bluing done in the old days.
Colt was basically running a metal polishers school.
A new polisher sat in a class room and was instructed on the techniques, then practiced on scrap metal to get the touch.
Once he was ready he was put on one of the less expensive lines, like the Official Police and began polishing while a Master polisher literally stood behind him looking over his shoulder and giving instruction.
Only after developing the skill was he turned loose on his own.
Only the very finest polishers were allowed to do the brilliant polishing of the Royal Blue finish as used on the Python.
It was said that while competitors guns were on trucks heading for distributors, the Python was still at Colt been finer and finer polished before bluing.
What the skill Colt was looking for was that ability to keep a flat surface perfectly flat and other areas well defined and even.
In order to do that Colt used massive wood polishing wheels covered with leather.
Today professional metal polishers use large metal wheels covered with abrasive belts.
Amateurs who do a little polishing and bluing usually use small diameter, thin felt buffs that make it impossible to keep a area properly defined, thus the bar of soap look of rounded off edges and ripples on the flats and down the barrel.
Here's what Colt used in the pre-war days..........
Post-war they could no longer get walrus hide for the covers so they went to aluminum wheels and abrasive belts...........
