Just to add some info regarding painting a blank.
While doing a restoration of an old rod for myself as an experiment, I used Krylon spray paint (for plastics) and once the blank was stripped and prepped, spray painted the 3 pc blank. After 3 very light coatings and drying for a week to harden, the finish turned out good but certainly was not even close to a hard factory finish for it marks easier than I thought it would. The rod turned out good in the end, but once again it was an experiment to see what the end result would be.
It was important to do 3 very light spray coating to eliminate paint run and I rigged up some hanging devices to hang each blank for drying. Would I do it again? Likely not unless a customer requested such, for the paint finish was not really hard enough to eliminate scratches from use.
When Gudebrod was in business, they made an acrylic finish called Rod Restorer that I used to coat old rod blanks to bring them back to a new look. This stuff was great, easy to work with and provided that shine finish you were asking about. Unfortunately Gudebrod is gone and so is their great product, for I searched far and wide to try to find more but met a dead end.
IMO, best use the blank as is when it left the factory.