Winston
Thanks to David for figuring it out and posting about it! I definitely don't deserve that much credit. I'm just a guy who figured out how to take good pictures with a cheap microscope. It's funny -- the only reason I started using the microscope to look at these blades is because a friend borrowed my 30x loupe a few weeks ago and hadn't brought it back. And he still hasn't brought it back.

The pictures are helpful for understanding what's going on, but they're not the whole story. They don't give a detailed image of the edge profile -- and of course the pictures by themselves don't tell us anything about edge durability. Someone is going to have to experiment with that...

As for others getting similar results, there are a lot of variables: different types of buffing wheel, compounds, amount of compound on the wheel, types of steel, angle that it's presented to the wheel, and so on. But have the feeling those variables don't matter all that much -- maybe you just have to buff it enough (using your eye as a guide) and to get a big improvement. It's possible there's a set of values for the variables that will maximize durability and sharpness, but I think there's probably a wide range of things you can do that will still result in a big improvement.