Mr Belch,
I can see what you are saying. Clearly you have also dipped into experimentation, make-doing, etc. I understand the call to do something correctly especially if you/we have the tools/parts to hand.
However, what I did, I had thought about, and I then made a 'judgement'.
I couldn't truely know how successful it would be, but I decided I had nothing to loose other than time. As it turns out, it seems to have been a pretty good result.
If it turned out like these reringing jobs some members have experienced, and reported here, and drank more oil than it did before [unlikely for me with much closer ring gaps], then nothing would have broken, all the bore still intact for a deep hone or rebore and I would have been a little wiser.
When I looked for rings, over here they were something like £400 a full set of OEM. Over in the US there were different brands available, some in the $100's, but IIRC these GRANT rings were dropped down from those prices to a mere $22 for four pistons worth.
Thus I bought 3 sets because had to pay $56 p&p. I had intended to sell the other 2 sets to pay for the job. I also bought some big end bearings, some small end bearings and some crank bearings.
In the end this old engine needed none of them, so they are stashed away in reserve.
What if my hone, perhaps improved slightly, turns out to give consistantly better results than doing the job with the 'correct' tool. The correct tool being in itself a compromise, recommended to satisfy a need, due to it's degree of universality, having to work over a range of diameters; whilst my tool does only one size.
The 180 degree twist given by my wrist down then backup can give a pretty good repeatable angle of hone, covering all way round, dropping say 3" in the process dgives a pretty good repeatable angle.
Rotating bottle and repeating helps any anomalies in my glueing the abrasive on.
Using my other hand gives the cross hatch effect.
I'm sure it is quite hard to use a drill and move up and down at the correct rate.
Could I improve it? Well always... How about covering the bottle with glue and dipping it into grit/sand/abrasive.