I needed some old nails for a project idea and I dug up a 5 gallon bucket from the residue of a burn pile of pallets. Pallets were used for many years at this location for a Japanese Fire Meditation ceremony. After digging around in the residue with a potato fork I picked up a handful at a time with one of those magnets on a stick used to pick up metal around the shop.

These are the nails before removing the scale and crud.

A cement mixer was used along with some lava landscape rock. The rock acted as an abrasive....more-or-less. About a third of the nails were put into the process at a time.

Nails shown during the process. On the black plastic can be seen a batch after processing...the clumps are the lava rock... the nails were retrieved from the crud with the magnet on a stick...

The nails after two cycles through the mixer. They are still covered with a bit of scale and rust. I will have to remove the remaining rust before I can braze the nails using another rotary system... will post pictures here when I get some of the nails completely(well...as complete as posssible) clean..