[mrerick]

I'm not sure if it's hard enough to remove rust, but bronze wool (get it at a hardware store) is softer than steel, and might not be as aggressive on the finish.

There is a recent discussion ==> here <== that may be helpful. I've not tried these techniques, but have used a very small tuft of bronze wool dry wrapped around a "Q-Tip". Lightly using this "tool", followed by preservative gun oil (see a discussion on this site's "General Information" page) got me where I needed to go.

Marc