Great! I just picked up some red rouge today too and hope that will get me that little bit farther I need to be happy. I also found a decent book on polishing aluminum
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/bibli...1-0972461809-0 It covers all the basics, great for begginers. No huge secrets revealed but it's extremely thorough about the whole process. The most important thing I took away from it was keeping parts SUPER clean bewteen each buffing step and avoiding ANY cross contamination of compounds. I am going to try a way more thorough approach to cleaning parts, hands, etc. between each step and see if my results are better. Well worth the $11 bucks for the book if you're just starting out.
I too have my bike in pieces and need to get crackin'. Good luck.