Stuart Wheaton wrote:

Here's the question, how do you clean steel for painting and so forth?

There's a guy in the shop right now, assembling some shape out of about 2"
square tube. He mentioned that he's getting ready to paint it. I asked,
is there anything special about this material? It's just plain ol' steel?
and he allowed that yeah, it is.

He said that he had just finished sanding it, and was going to wipe it down
with acetone, let it dry, prime it, let _it_ dry (a couple of hours) and go
ahead and paint it.

Admittedly, that sounds terribly labor-intensive for your needs, but it's
an idea. You could probably get minimum-wage sanders and wipers, and help
the economy! :-)

Cheers!
Rich