After cutting I relax the sharp edges with steel wool and then use Brasso before de-greasing and washing off residues. Then the resin gets added. In an ideal situation that would be that, but often you get a bit of over-spill and you need to sand off the excess and re-polish. If you want the resin to be flush with the metal then you'll need to overfill the pockets and sand back anyway, so don't bother with the pre-polish. Resin, by and large, polishes up well with Brasso, but micro scratches are your enemy. Work through the grades of paper - there's no way around it, a lot of elbow grease needed for a decent job. Finish with Brasso and then to remove the micro scratches use a polishing compound, like 310, and buff buff buff..!