Vinegar rust removal

I recently got a box of rusty old horseshoes from a buddy. Many still had the nails in them and most were covered in rust and crap (literally). My wife planned to use them for a project, so I needed to clean them up. I remembered reading that vinegar would work as a natural rust remover, so I decided to give it a try. Here is a sample of the shoes before I started, pretty crusty.

I knocked off the loose debris and nails and put all the shoes in a five gallon bucket. Poured three gallons of everyday household vinegar over them so they were submerged and walked away. Five days later, I poured the vinegar out and hosed them off. Here they are after a rinse and quick blast with compressed air.

All surface rust was gone. There was a little left on a few of the shoes, but it simply washed off with the hose. I pulled out the remaining nails, and gave them a quick squirt of WD40 and a once over with a wire brush.

I know most people couldn't care less about horseshoes, but this technique would work for anything that needs rust removal. As long as you can build a leak proof container, you could remove rust from just about anything (although, I'd be careful about different types of metal).