Rusty Jig Hooks ?

One good solution is phosphoric acid. Not hard to find either, just open a can of coke or pepsi Actually, Barq's Root beer seems to work best (wonder what that stuff does to your stomach?). It takes a while for it to work though. You'd probably have to soak the hook for a few days. I've used dilute phosporic acid from my lab to remove rust in an hour or so but that's not a good solution for most people. Hydrochloric acid works faster but will eat the metal as well as the rust. Phosphoric acid is very safe for the metal under the rust and actually leaves a protective coating on the metal to prevent furture rust.
You can find stuff called Naval Jelly at hardware stores. It contains phosphoric acid and is used to clean rust off of metal.

You can also remove rust by electrolysis but that seems like to much work for just cleaning hooks. This method works great though.

Also, I use a Drimmel, rather than a file, to remove light rust when I don't feel like doing the acid bath treatment.

Steve

 

yea what he said...
try to prevent rust by keeping your stuff dry or using a hair dryer to knock off and dry the moisture...
Wrap your wet jigs in a towel or place inside and old onion sack and give it a swing to act like a spin cycle...WD-40 sprayed on your jigs will help too

 

Naval Jelly????? sounds like that would be for something else! Just kidding you Navy guys.......I could not resist