Smoothing prints

I use acetone vapour at the moment with pretty good results but it is a bit tricky to get right with some parts and I'm looking for an alternative too.
I'd be interested to hear if xtc-3d is any good too although I can only find one supplier in the UK and the postage is a ridiculous amount.
Apparently, the filabot smoothing pen is just a refillable paint marker pen which you by much cheaper.

I'm testing out a method with resin casting.  I'm mixing a small amount and painting the resin onto the surface, which gives a nice smooth end result.  There are two problems so far though, the resin does not bond to pla, i'm not sure about abs.  The other problem is the resin that i'm using has a pot life of about 3 minutes.  So once I mix it I only have about 2.5 mins to slap it on a surface.

This should work out fine for me personally, because the part I'm printing out isn't going to be the end product, I'm casting it.  So even though I don't get a strong material bond, it's enough for me to have a smooth finish for making a mold with.  Much cheaper printing one part, doing most of the finishing work on it, then making a mold for however many.

Please ignore the crappy print, I have to redial in my entire machine from a bunch of recent changes i've done.  Anyway, clearly my crappy paint job looks crappy.  Never had a customer ask for a part to be painted so I guess it's time to start now.  The painted one is just that, nothing done except I put a weak coat of acrylic on it.  The other one I painted with resin to smooth it, and it's got a coat of primer on it.  It's very easy to lose detail with the resin though, it starts out with a low viscosity but very quickly starts gelling and then hardening.  I'll post another picture after I paint it.