When I did my “Rusty Resurection” ItalVega a few years ago, everything was rusted beyond belief. I used a whole bunch of different grades of steel wool after I chiseled the crust off. Yes, I had to chisel my way through the crusty rust using a screwdriver that I didn’t care about that was cheap and soft. I could have just replaced the Campy bits but chose to keep them with the bike for the whole patina look. I held them with a pair of needle nose vise grip with the jaws wrapped with layers of electric tape and then put a dab of Mothers Polish in the steel wool and worked the bits back to life. Some bits came back almost unscathed by the surface rust , others lost some of their chrome. The bike came out with a cool look of exactly what it is, a high end racing bike that was abandoned in a field in a Central California beach town. I wrote about it on my blog and there are pictures of the whole bike. joesvintageroadbikes.wordpress , see Rusty Resurection