Welcome to the spinner world, you will not regret it!
Let me give you the basic beginners tutorial on how to get the best results.
1. You can use abralon or sandpaper. The pros of sandpaper is it's wildly cheaper, but doesn't have as consistent of finish as abralon. If you resurface alot, I'd go with sandpaper (5-10 bucks a whole set versus 5 dollars an abralon pad). However, American sandpaper grits are about half the grit as abralon (800 grit sandpaper is the same as 1500 grit abralon). Look up the conversion charts if necessary.
2. As for cleaning, you will hear about a million options. Some people just use water, I like to use simple green just like hackjandy because it's cheap and dilutable at Wally world and works beautifully, some pay extra for brand name stuff. Choose whatever your heart desires, put it in a spray bottle, and use it to wet while youre sanding.
3. Go buy a large plastic tub if your spinner isn't already in one, because it will spray all over the place and tubs are like 5 bucks and much easier to clean than your house walls.
4. In terms of intervals of sanding, I find that you have to touch up surfaces every 5 to 10 games, and do full resurfaces every 40-50 games. Don't resurface every week, you will go below the legal diameter.
5. As for what surface you keep your balls at, find out what surface they were from factory, OR (now you have options) adjust it to perform like you want by experimenting with surfaces.
6. Don't use too much polish, you might think having a glossy finish makes your ball look great, but looks are not priority over performance, do what the ball needs, not what your eyes like. A good start would be to use some polish on pearls, little to no polish on hybrids, and none on solids. Or, start where the ball was designed to be and go from there. Not all balls have the drag over the finger squeak you refer too, but that doesn't mean they aren't strong (case in point, my marvel s feels like chalk, but is much stronger than my squeaky hyroad pearl).
