To my eye, the bead blast gives a rough satin finish. Rust bluing provides a fine satin, if you start with a smooth or nearly polished surface. I've never tried rust bluing a matte surface. It might prove interesting?
Sand will be very rough, as mentioned before. However, you can get aluminum oxide in all different grades and the fine grades will turn the surface dark gray and give it a fine and very dull surface. A lot of surface area results from an aluminum oxide blasting job. I use it on sights to prep them for black oxide to get the most sooty looking black possible. Sand and aluminum oxide and Biasil and Starblast will remove metal. Beads remove very little but achieve impact texture and remove old finish well.
The high surface area from aluminum oxide blasting will allow almost all paint-style finishes to adhere extremely well. It also serves to allow Parkerizing to be very active and achieve a maximally thick phosphate layer. In the case of zinc phosphate, this creates the best possible base for any kind of spray-on "shake-and-bake" finish, like GunKote or DuraCoat or the Brownells Bake-on Teflon Moly paint finishes. Some of these may be closer to what you are trying to achieve than anything else? Read up on them. They offer excellent protection.
Nick
