Beginner polishing and easing questions

I’m thinking of trying my hand at polishing (semi-mirror or mirror) and easing the spine and choil of one of my knives, but I have a couple questions:
1. Can you polish every (common) type of steel (stainless and carbon) to a (semi-) mirror polish? I’m asking because I might want to try polishing a beater knife.
2. I’m thinking of using several grits of sandpaper (for instance 120-220-320-500-800) and some micro mesh pads afterwards. I have read that 000 and 0000 steel wool and car polish can be used afterwards, but I’m curious if anyone has any experience with using steel wool. Also, should I get the MX pads which seem to be made for metal polishing or the normal pads?
3. How is a mirror polish maintained on a (non-stainless clad) knife? Barkeepers friend?
4. I guess I should sharpen after polishing, right?
5. For easing the spine and choil, am I right in assuming that I can use the same sanding paper as used for polishing?
6. Any other things I should take into consideration?

1. Most knife steels can be highly polished. Some are definitely more challenging than others.
2. I have never used micro mesh.
3. Unfourtanely the only good way to maintain a high polish is more polishing. Soft cladding brought to a high polish can be scratched with a kitchen towel. BkF would dull the finish.
4. Yes
5. Yes. If you have a dremel type tool, you could use cratex abrasives with great success on the choil.

I would say that mirror finish is something I would leave to monosteel/honyaki knives. As was already mentioned - cladding is too soft to actually keep the mirror finish for too long. Some sort of kasumi finish is easier to maintain (easiest is probably the finish made with a fine rust eraser).

Otherwise use sandpaper up to about 2000 grit (following up with the meshgrid can be a good idea) and the off to a buffer. I think that dremel with a buffing wheel might be hard to get an even finish (as the contact area of the buffing wheel with the blade will be very small), but it might be worth a shot.

1. yes
2. both pads can work (well, I've not used the padded ones on hardened monosteel yet, so can't 100% verify)
4. yes, and try not to have a sharp edge going into it. Can be painful...
but if you're planning to thin, do the majority of that before polishing so you don't need to go up the blade face afterwards scuffing it up again
5. yes. You can even get a cheap set of diamond files for that as well
6. don't rush it, and be as consistent as possible!

Thanks all, this is very useful