Cleaned Stainless Steel with green scouring pad.
 

In my haste, I cleaned day old spaghetti sauce off a stainless steel counter with a green scouring pad.

The surface was scratched previously, but in a uniform fashion. The spot I have now cleaned has circular abrasion marks that are noticeable from a distance and it's driving me nuts.

Is there any way to brush out my scouring pad marks undo my dumb move?

KenyaBob:

Those Scotchbrite pads are also sold in a larger size format at companies listed under "Machine Shop Equipment & Supplies" in your yellow pages. Machine shops use them for polishing metal after machining it.

Your best bet would be to phone 3M Abrasive's 1-800 customer service number and ask to speak to someone knowledgeable about using these Scotchbrite pads for polishing metals. The green pad isn't their least abrasive pad, and I know they also make an "ultra fine" pad. These abrasive pads are also available in a round format for installing on a special pad holder that 3M makes for mounting in a hand grinder. The pad holder isn't cheap (it's about $40) but I believe you could use it and progressively finer abrasive round pads to polish out that dull spot.

I had a similar problem when my wife cleaned a stainless steel sink. The sink had a sort of horizontal 'pattern' (not a clear shine). She had rubbed in a vertical pattern.

I used fine steel wool to rub over the problem area. It worked but was still a noticable area. I the end, I had to go over the whole side of the sink before it was not noticable.

use wet sandpaper on the pan - also work well on SS sinks

Thanks for that snippet of information - I didn't think there would be answer to that problem... I'm going to sort out my stainless steel sink with your help guys.

Cleaning
 

Never ever us steel wool to clean a stainless stell anything. Any specks left behind will rust in just a few hours.
Wal-Mart- any boating supply or Automotive store sells stainless steel polish that's applyed with a damp clean rag.