I think there's a secondary burnishing effect with the steel wool and MAAS and powders. Also, the soft backings give a different appearance than with paper and a hard backing… I want to say it's more “natural” looking.
It seems that the conventional view of finishing or polishing revolves around “scratches”, or more specifically, the lack thereof. Like scratches are bad/wrong or something? However,… sanding, finishing and polishing are by nature done through scratching the steel’s surface. There’s no way to get around scratching the steel, though it may get smaller and finer...
So, since that way of thinking can be frustrating due to the contradictory paradox and nature of it,… I’ve been trying to think of it and see it more as about how the surface of the steel reflects light and/or optics, "diffraction gratings" etc. Scratches still do play a role, but it’s secondary. It’s using scratches (and sometimes etching) to play the light off the surface of the steel for different effects... scratches of different grits running at different angles and over lapping, burnishing, etching etc.
Anyway,... that's my thinking on these types of NT experimental finishes.
Here's a close up. You can see how the angle of the light only catches the scratches that run in that one certain direction, and all the rest just disappear. It catches the light in an orderly fashion because that series of scratches run parallel to each other and are of the same grit. It accents the form of the blade from that angle, in that light. If you change and move the angle, it has a flashy "flickering" effect.
The “eye” gets confused and doesn’t know how to read it.