[Tommy]

Thick of a scratch and repairing it this way. A scratch is a gouge in the surface that is visible to the naked eye. Polishing the area around the gouge without removing it only provides a shiny area around a scratch. You need to either fill in the gouge until it is up to the level of the surrounding surface, or you need to lower the surrounding surface until it is the same level as the bottom of the gouge. Most people don't like the idea of filling in the gouge by aluminum welding, so if the scratch isn't too deep, they'll remove the surrounding material. The common way to do that is by sanding. Use aggressive sandpaper with low number grit to remove the surface until it is level with the bottom of the scratch (i.e., until the original scratch blends in with all the other scratches left by the sandpaper. Then use progressively finer (higher number) grit sandpaper to replace large scratches with smaller ones. Finally, use polishing compounds to replace the finest sandpaper scratches with scratches so fine that they are not visible to the naked eye. This is your challenge.