When I was a young shooter, and then later a young cop, I was very 'regimented' about thoroughly cleaning my blued and stainless guns. I removed lead fouling from the charge holes and religiously scrubbed off carbon marks from the front of the cylinder faces. Ditto scouring stainless slides and barrels on my pistols.
Later, after many years of being trained and serving as a LE firearms instructor and armorer, including going through one of the S&W revolver armorer classes (for the DAO snubs at that time), I've
relaxed a bit.
I no longer heavily scrub the cylinder faces to remove carbon marks on stainless cylinders. I just remove any lead (or other) fouling
buildup, by
hand-powered brushes and some CLP's. The black carbon rings on the cylinder faces get lightly brushed and wiped, but not scoured, and remain to some visible degree. I think of them as proof I use my revolvers.
The inside of the charge holes aren't what I would've considered 'pristinely clean' in my younger years, and I don't use a power tool to clean them (not even using softer copper or brass brushes). I keep them clean enough so there's no trouble inserting fresh rounds, even when the cylinder heats up from shooting, and empty cases are easily extracted.
Ditto lightly cleaning around the rear of the barrel and the surrounding area inside the frame window, where I use a plastic/nylon or copper brush (except on aluminum frames). I'm especially careful not to use any cleaning methods/tools that might damage my aluminum-framed revolvers. I don't own any revolvers that have titanium cylinders, but if I did, I'd be very, very careful cleaning them so they wouldn't become damaged.
Something else I came to appreciate over time is that blue steel and black-finished guns
look cleaner, sooner.
Makes it easier.
Just some thoughts.
FWIW, when I was a working instructor and served as a pistol, rifle, shotgun and revolver armorer, I saw far more 'gun problems' that were the result of overzealous, improper or inattentive 'cleaning methods' than I ever saw as the result of actual gun problems. Shooter-caused "cleaning & maintenance" problems typically far outnumbered actual gun problems, abuse/neglect and ammo problems.