I had heard a neat trick to keep steel tools from rusting (Can’t
remember where I heard about this, but thank you whoever told me). I
haven’t used it yet, because I haven’t had a problem with rust
(yet!), but here goes:
Make up a nice batch of pickle (Sparex is fine). Add some scrap
pieces of copper to the pickle, a lot of copper, please. Throw in
your steel tools (dapping punches, chasing tools, stamps, hammer
heads, etc. ) Your steel will be copper-plated, lightly. Copper does
not RUST! Remove the tools and neutralize the pickle and dry
thoroughly. You now have tools that will not oxidize/rust, at least
as long as the plating lasts. When it wears down, do it again. It
sounds like this would be a lot easier than having to remove all
that nasty RUST!
La Linda