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It can be a lot of work if you don't have a buffing wheel. It can be done though. Depends upon how much effort your willing to put into it. If not, take it to a chrome shop. They have all the equipment to polish it.
What to do:
Start sanding- what grit to start with depends upon what shape the steel is it. If it has a mill finish (straight from the mill), then you probably need to start with 80 grit to get the deeper stuff out. Then go to 180, 240, 320, 600, you can go to 1000, 2000, even 4000 grit. It depends upon what kind of finish you want and what equipment you have.
After sanding comes polishing. If you have gone all the way to 4000 grit, you can go straight to polishing compound. If you stopped at 1000 grit, then you should use rubbing compound first, followed by polishing compound.
How to do it:
You can do this all by hand, but you will be very, very tired.
Sand with each grade by hand. 600 grit and above are wet sanded. You can tell if you didn't do a good enough job with the previous grit if you can see scratch marks that aren't coming out. Go back to the previous grit and start over.
You can do the 80, 180, 240, 320 with just about any sander. A palm sander, orbital sander... The 600 and above wet sanding is done by hand.
I assume you don't have a buffer wheel. (The kind that rotate like a grinder, not the kind that rotate like a sander ). If you did, you wouldn't be asking about polishing your pipes. But if you did, you could skip the 600 and above and just polish it out.
You really need some sort of rotating polisher to do the final polish. You can do it by hand, but it just won't come out with that bright finish your looking for. A drill, a cheap Harbor Freight polisher will do. Use a liquid polishing compound. The kind they use for paint. You can buy this at many auto parts stores or at a car paint store.
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