Well, the Dykem will be here by the end of next week, so I'll wait and try it. I guess what you're saying is that I can put it on lots of parts and surfaces, and see (photograph) what they look like after cycling the gun what, a dozen times or so?
I also bought a pack of 'snap caps', mostly because of Jerry's comments in the S&W book.
At some point, I'll either try to do the polishing myself, or find someone I trust who will just "do" the whole thing, but most of the time today, the gun was shooting better than I've ever done before. I think my advice for myself is to forget working on the gun, and spend all that time dry-firing instead.
It's something I've been stuck with my whole life. I expect my computer to crash, my motorcycles to have some kind of failure, and the guns to find any way they can to complicate life for me. It's like I have a hair trigger somewhere in my brain, and any sound that suddenly is "different", or anything mechanical that feels just slightly different, or a computer that suddenly seems to take more time than earlier, is just a warning about something about to go 'boom'. Even racing r/c cars, if you're sensitive to that kind of thing, you know something is about to go wrong before it actually does. Sometimes it's good, as it's a lot easier and cheaper to fix something before the 'boom'!
When I brought my gun to Will for cleaning, I tried to point out what I thought was 'wrong', but he never got my message, or noticed what I was trying to explain - he felt "we" needed to clean the gun, and put in lighter springs. Heck, that's what the last gunsmith told me on the phone yesterday! .....but in Jerry's book, he goes through a very complete list of things to check over before you even think of opening up the gun. I wish more others followed that advice.
While I'm in this kind of mood, I wonder how many people out there, who think nothing of working on their S&W, have ever seen, let alone bought, Jerry's book? Maybe that's human nature - would explain why a cruise ship captain could drive his perfectly good ship right into a rock. :-(