[Rasper]

I find that worn out 400 grit is as far as I really need to go on stainless. After that I go directly to the green if I'm polishing large areas, or to black if it's small pieces of hardware. I can't seem to get the black to cut very well on large flat areas. The stainless seems to break down the emery, or something.
First I bear down hard and get the metal hot enough to melt the compound. That's when it really starts cutting. That cuts out all of the 400 scratches but leaves some of it's own. Then I go back over it lightly with the same green and that usually produces a fine polish.

The main problem with stainless is the sanding. It's so damn hard. It's almost impossible to make yourself sand it enough with one grit before moving up to a finer paper. It's a lot easier to sand those scratches out than to polish them out later. I have a good bit of experience polishing stainless and I still make that mistake frequently. I use a 2500 rpm air sander with hook-it discs kept wet with WD-40. It makes a mess throwing the WD-40 all over the place but it cuts fast and the paper lasts a lot longer than if used dry.

Richard