remember guys, after you get that clean continuous coat of CA on your pen and get the top smooth, everything else is about removing as many scratches as possible. All abrasives scratch the surface they are applied to. That's what they are for. The trick is to remove just enough material to get to the bottom of the deepest scratch on the surface, while not adding any more deeper scratches. Then the next grade abrasive removes the scratches from the previous one, and so on and so on until the scratches are so small that they do not cause the light hitting the blank to bounce in all different directions. A pen that has a nice "shine" is simply one that the light hitting the surface is reflected back in a consistent pattern because the scratches and other surface imperfections are small and rare enough not to interfere to a visible degree.
micromesh pads, buffing wheels with different compounds, and polishes or swirl removers are all simply different grades of abrasives. Regardless of how they are applied to the pen, they are simply removing tiny amounts of CA to level out the scratch pattern from the previous abrasive, and replace it with a smaller scratch pattern. Of course this only works correctly if you move from a coarser abrasive to a finer one every step. One mistake and you have erased however many previous steps, and gone back to a deeper scratch pattern. This also happens IF YOUR ABRASIVE IS DIRTY!!!!! A buffing wheel left uncovered in the shop one time while you cut, sand, turn whatever, is very likely contaminated with coarser particles and will either not polish as well, or sometimes actually rescratch your finish, undoing previous work. Same with micromesh if it is stored in water that is not changed frequently, or without a little dish soap in it.
Polishes are just fine particles of abrasive suspended in a liquid or paste. They are usually very fine, and some have a special advantage that they break down fairly uniformly into even finer particles as they are used. This only works if you keep the same material in contact with the surface, if you move your paper towel around, you defeat this. And the medium usually has something in it to fill microscopic scratches and make the surface look even smoother, but that effect is temporary, which is one reason things need to be repolished from time to time.
But remember, all this stuff only works if clean, and only if you have a thick, clean and uniform enough coat of CA to keep you from sanding through before you get all the scratches removed.
Of course there is the bit about dancing widdershins around a fire, naked while the moon is ............... can't give away all the secrets, now can we