Yes.
Unless you're accomplished at polishing light,very expensive,metal things,do it by hand.
You can use rubbing compound and a soft cotton terrycloth bath towel to start.To get that mirror finish use an ultra fine polishing compound and a microfiber cloth.

Painting is another matter though.Paint doesn't stick very well to bare metal surfaces.For this reason you might want to look into powdercoating.There's a thread on this very page where I brought this subject to the discussion.I don't know about the FAA's or your A&P's ideas on this but since chroming IS frowned upon and it would seem there are no adverisements for powdercoating in the A/C mags,powdercoating might be forbidden too.