I work in a brush plating environment and recently was task to perform repair service on a laminator extruder which does finish work on plastics sheet.

The job scope is to recover the score lines on the cylinders that also requires a mirror finish else the surfaces where the different of chrome and nickel repaired region will leave dark shades on the plastic sheet when the laminator is on operations.
Our task was successful using brush plating approach to recover all score lines but we did not manage to achieve mirror finish even using manual labor and the assisted by fine sand paper to obtain mirror finish.

My main question is the "how to" get a perfect mirror finish on the surface. Where did we not manage to achieve the require shine same as the surface?

Thank you and have a great day

Patrick