Steel wool can be effectively wiped off between coats with a tack cloth. To get speckles means you missed that step. BLO is a component of most wood finishes like Truoil, linspeed and formbys. They just add more driers so it will polymerize into more of a varnish. This increases the finish durability immensely.
Sako uses BLO. BLO will match most factory oil finishes. Folks should use whatever they want. I'm not telling everyone what to use. Just the op who asked me.
