I once asked a friend of the family (a retired city PD officer) if he cleaned the burn rings off the face of the cylinder of his service revolver. He stepped to his car, got his .38 out of the glove box, unloaded it, handed it to me asked, "What do you think?" (The answer was "no.") All he ever did was use solvent and a "toothbrush" to remove anything built up; if he found any flakes of lead or brass still adhering, he used more solvent and a brass bore brush held sideways.
The gentleman I alluded to in an earlier post - the one who cautioned against "overcleaning" - was of the opinion that nobody really bothered themselves much about burn rings until stainless revolvers became common. The general consensus among older acquaintances who I talked with about gun care was that... I worried too much.