Hi Rob,
If I’m remembering right, one fix for orange peel is using a sharp belt…either silicon carbide (I am Old School) or diamond with little pressure at the 600 grit stage. We used to go to polish directly from 600 SC, but these days, you could insert an intermediate step of light pressure (again) with 3000 grit before polish. The issue, I think, is using pressure will pull particles out of the fibrous structure of jade. Usually the polish was AlOx on leather, but you could also use diamond, prolly 14K, altho’ you could try going higher in a second step to see if the polish was enhanced.
You are certainly correct that the old timers would have lots of info on polishing jade…also some of those anthologies of articles from the old Lapidary Journal or old pamphlets on cab cutting. I don’t have time to see if any of that info has made it onto the internet. I have found some good info on some of the lapidary forums, but it sometimes takes some searching and reading thru stuff…HTH somebody, royjohn