I read that Storms heated a piece of Ni mesh to blue ie noteable thickness of NiO. He found it impossible to transfer Pd, even though he rubbed the crap out of it. As though the oxide layer acts like a lubricant, preventing the galling action. Also, judging by AlanG's awesome s.e.m., presumably the NiO layer also gets mixed up with the Pd too.
Did he actually mean that? I read/interpreted that as the NiO layer getting removed by the procedure and the loss of material counterbalancing the deposition of Pd, making it look as if no Pd has been transferred.
In his predictions further in the text (paper here) he writes that a sufficiently thick oxide layer on the NiO would make the material more active and suggests that other oxide-forming materials could be used as the substrate. If transferring Pd was impossible with NiO, why would he suggest this?
I thought that to be consistent with what I observed in my tests, although I used different materials. The oxide layer formed by flame heating the substrate was significantly rougher than the starting surface and seemingly made burnishing the other material easier. Most of the oxide layer fell off in the process, which I'm assuming would cause a weight loss (without a microbalance it would be difficult to tell, however).