The relief of stresses in bore by machining off o. d. is a valid point. This makes sense to do this to get a proper taper into the bore.
What I don't see is the argument that tuning is made easier by using a smaller diameter barrel. I think you will understand the analogy using finance's. This would be like saying, you could get some one out of debt more easily if you can first get him into more debt.
I don't believe tuning is made easier by increasing vibration. Probably what has happened to Calfee and others is simply this: They don't find a light barrel shoots very well and they find by adding weight to the barrel they can improve it. They call this weight a tuner and declare that lighter weight barrels can be more easily tuned. The conclusion they should have reached is light barrels more often NEED tuning.
I think you have to follow the history of the whole tuner thing, and I know there were tuners back when cavemen didn't work for Geico, but I'm talking about the rimfire tuners that first showed up around 1995-96.
For one, I've never bought the theory that you can make a barrel shoot better by first making it worse, but from the time I've been shooting rimfire, I've never seen a heavy barrel do consistently well against a barrel that was between .850 and .900. In other words, ever since I've been doing this "light" barrels have shot well. Adding weight seems to improve them. But I think you have to say a lighter more flexible barrel is easier to tune simply because of the weight that would have to be added to a heavy, stiffer barrel. Common sense says the heavier stiffer barrel should shoot better, but they don't at least not consistently. All of Calfee's barrels that I've ever seen have been in .825 to .900 range and maybe some a little smaller. This was not initially done for tune; it was done for weight. BR-50 gave you a 1% increase in score for each pound you were under 12lbs, so you could often win with a pistol even though you didn't shoot the best agg. I hope we don't get into the fairness of that as BR-50 is long gone. As tuners became more popular and the weight advantage disappeared, barrels became longer. Some people say to make them more tunable; I think a longer barrel to a point shoots better anyway.
I've seen people shoot is gale force winds and then jump up and turn their tuner a few clicks and say "there it is". I never subscribed to that and still don't. I think the weight (or mass) of the tuner has more to do with increasing the accuracy than anything but I suppose there is a maximum weight. I said for years that adjustable tuners could not have a great effect because when you calculate the actual change in weight on one click it is insignificant. My opinion was that a tuner is simply a weight. I have modified that opinion to some degree over the years but still don't see it as a miracle device. I always thought a tuner without clicks but with stackable weights would be the best choice. I also always thought, and stil do, that tuners once set should probably never be reset. A lot of people disagree with that, but several of the movers and shakers in rimfire seem to be coming to basically the same conclusion.
To summarize, the light barrels shot very well, the weight improved them.
Finally, if there is any effect of being able to tune better due to the expansion barrel, it is a side effect. It's merely a way of mechanically inducing a taper
Finally, if you BELIEVE it works, it will.