While a skillfully executed barrel and frame ramp job is a wonderous thing to behold, and long considered to be an enhancement...the question remains:
Is it necessary?
In the preponderance of cases...No. In what is approaching a half-century of beatin' and knockin' on 1911 pistols, I've never cured a feeding problem by mirror polishing either...and I've never actually polished a feed ramp beyond addressing an obvious rough spot...and never with a high-speed moto tool. The ramp geometry...the angles of the ramps and how they work together to hustle the round into the chamber...is much more important than the surface finish.
During the mad scramble for production in WW2, the US Army decided that parkerizing would speed things up at a lower cost...and the finish was given the nod. Even in those unenlightened days, they understood the importance of a smooth feed ramp...so they also specified that the final finishing cut was to be made on the frames after the rough finish was applied.
On a small block of pistols...somewhere along the line...Ithaca dropped the ball and shipped them with parkerized feed ramps. This was discovered in due course, and the inspectors...in a fit of indignant snit...were busily finding the "bad" pistols, and made preparations to ship them back to Ithaca for repair.
Somewhere along that line, somebody....likely a Sergeant...suggested that rather than immediately getting their skivvies in a wad...why not test-fire the pistols in order to determine what problems, if any, that they might present with their rough feed ramps.
It was arranged, and the guns all fed and functioned just fine. They were returned to inventory...and later issued...without further adieu.
