Old rusty screws for scope.

So after looking for new screws for over a month I decided to try and salvage the old ones. I soaked them in WD40 for an entire month hoping the rust would crumble away. It did somewhat, although not as much as I would have liked.




Either way I continued to sand and paint other parts of the scope such as the tube mount.

New rusty screws for scope.

Today I tried looking for some replacement screws at a place that carries anything and everything dealing with hardware. They could not find one screw to replace the scope's old ones. All the sizes were off by millimeters. How could this be? Has screw technology changed in 20 years?! Alas, I was told that the screws were usable and that I should purchase a rust remover of some sort to bring them back to life.