How far you sand really is relative to how you intend to finish. With many film finishes, you can cut things off at 180-220 and you'll get a pristine finish. When you are using straight oil like BLO or real Tung Oil, going up much finer is going to get you an uber-silky feel with many wood species and will increase the sheen level a bit as you build your finish. I go from 220 to 320 to 400 to 600 to 800 for things I'm just using oil on that are fine grained woods. Feels "ma-va-lous" in the end! The finer stuff like Micromesh, at least for me, is for "finishing the finish"...flattening and refining the surface prior to final polishing to a high gloss...but they can also be used to control sheen from matte to satin by themselves much as steel wool would be used for similar on cured oil based finishes.