Have you considered nickel plating them? It is pretty easy if you can get them clean enough. Depending, you may need to copper plate them first, but that's not a big trick.
Interesting idea. I just looked up DIY nickel plating and it looks like it would go directly on iron without copper plating first. But I think they were originally zinc plated (I'd need a spectrometer to be sure, and don't have one of those in my back pocket.
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I will definitely update this on my plating efforts. Looks like I'll need to derust them a bit more before plating. Currently out of Evaporust, so this is on the back burner till I get more of that. I do have some muriatic acid, but that stuff is nasty.
It would take off any remaining zinc plating as well as rust.
