It's really not that bad or hard. Also, depending on what you do, I don't know that the polishing is necessary for powder coating. In the U.S., Race Tech can hard anodize any fork leg. Originally, they told me that the process requires them to hard anodize the entire leg inside and out and that meant they could not powder coat it. Black anodizing would have left the legs looks close to how they came, but not really. Anyway, the legs had to be polished for anodizing. However, they ended up being able to powder coat them after all. I assume they powder coated them after anodizing.