Fermin I heard your name way back when I can't remember but the reference was good, I do remember that much. Maybe one of the trade rags I can't recall.
Anything you get into with cylinders or barrel throats that you need help with or services outside your tooling I will be glad to help if you need it. You are right stuff is expensive. I started with piloted reamers and abrasive cloth on a machined slotted aluminum dowel to clean them up, then graduated to using ACRO laps for honing and polishing after reaming, finally I forked over some serious change for a Sunnen LBA-666 hone, and even more serious change to outfit it with all the pistol caliber mandrels and abrasive stones. The Sunnen has an advantage in that it will keep the throat round where other means of cleaning up tool marks left by the reamer leave it to chance whether it will stay on center or stay round.
Once I acquired the Sunnen hone, I started buying undersize reamers so they would leave me enough meat to clean throats up without going over advertised diameters, this works great. Previously I had difficulty getting reamers that would cut large enough, I would end up finishing the cylinder and it wasn't big enough in the OD to pass muster. Shooters want throats .0005" over boolit diameter, not .001" over and staying in this perfect window is difficult at best.
For bluing I mix the Oxpho cream and Oxpho liquid 50/50, I clean the cylinders in hot soapy water and heat them til I can't hold them in my bare hand, then swab the bluing in with a Q tip, finally another hot soapy water wash, blow dry and oil down, they come out quite nice. It doesn't seem to affect the factory bluing unless it is old and really thin, then I can't allow it to get on the old bluing as it will color it. Haven't had to send one out yet for hot bluing.
Ruger SA cylinders are a study in boneheadedness at best. They come in on a rail car, long billets 2.25" in diameter made of a special steel that is tough, granular, does NOT like to machine well, it is hard, and VERY inconsistent. It tears, it pulls out and leaves horrible scratches behind, I don't care how sharp or how new the reamer is, whether it is HSS or carbide, or who's name is on it, or what kind of oil or tap magic you use, you will get one 45 cylinder that cuts so rough and so hard the reamer will audibly SQUAWK every time you turn the handle, it will leave the nastiest tool marks, and then the next 45 cylinder you get, cuts like butter with the same reamer. No rhyme or reason to it, you will not know how a cylinder will go until you chuck it up in the vise and start cutting. No way to predict how it will cut or how it will finish. This is Ruger and that is what comes with the territory. Their stainless isn't any different, it's just a tad softer and just as inconsistent and unpredictable as the blued cylinders.
Ruger used to use a Hitachi machine with 3 cutters on it for throating cylinders, they would gang ream 3 throats, index over one hole and plunge the other 3. Each cutter cut a pair of throats so you had 3 pairs of throats. When they replaced the reamers they only replaced them when they wore too bad to use anymore and if the others next to it still had life in them, they would only replace one and let the others cut more. Now you have say a Super Blackhawk cylinder cut with a new .432" reamer, and a worn .431" and a further worn .429" so you got throats that are all over the map in size. I have used 4 different pilots on the same cylinder before, and it is most common to use 2 different pilots so they are as snug as possible.
When I get a throat that is oval or belled or somebody's been in there before, I often hit it with the Sunnen hone just to take a shine to it, see where the hone shines and where it leaves bluing, to see how bad out of rounds it is, and I get it smooth enough that a pilot will fit in there good and snug, only then do I take the reamer to it. Getting that pilot fitted in there good is the WHOLE TRICK to reaming cylinder throats and staying on center with them.
I also check chamber reaming sometimes too. I had to buy some finishing reamers to take care of the occasional rough or underbored chamber.
I loved Texas, spent all of the 1970s along the Texas Gulf Coast fitting and welding in shipyards, truck shops, refineries and oilpatch fab shops, built drilling rigs in Houston, went offshore and installed them in the Gulf, those were good days.. Picked up a cute little Senorita in a bar in Corpus one nite, gave her a ride home just being a nice guy, she lived in a really nice place on Ocean Drive, heh Freddie Fender's daughter go figure.. You need help with something, give me a holler..