[Sca-cooks] OOP but not OT-seeking advice on a cast-iron hibachi

[Daniel & Elizabeth Phelps]

Greetings, fellow cooks!
As we stare down the throat of several more hurricanes here in Tallahassee (the panhandle of Florida, we're closer to Mobile, Alabama than we are to Miami), I am thinking about my cast iron hibachi again. We picked it up at a yard sale a while back, and the times we used it to cook with we were quite pleased with it. But, I have a maintenance question:
I loaned the hibachi to some friends to take to Gulf Wars a while back-I believe it was the Gulf Wars that got rained out, and they returned it to me rusty. I was entirely unenthused with this, one of the many reasons those individuals are not friends any more. It's only surface rust as I recall, and it's been in storage ever since, as I really wasn't sure what to do with it. I can figure out how to clean it, steel wool/wire brush/wire brush on a drill, that's not too hard to figure out, just a lot of elbow grease and some very colorful language speculating on the ancestry and hobbies of said former friends, but then what? Do I use soap and water with the steel wool and wire brushes, or do I just use them dry? And how do I keep it from rusting again? I though of stove polish, but googling this topic seems to indicate this would just not be suitable. Would cast iron stove paint be appropriate? It's a charcoal-burning hibachi, not a wood stove, so I assume the operating temperatures would be higher. Or do I  clean it off and just  use it naked? ( The stove, not me...)
As always, any advice the good gentles on this list could offer me would be most appreciated. And yes, I know to use it outside, and not on our wooden deck. Thank you, and everyone have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend-here in Trimaris we're crowning our next King and Queen. Take care now.
YIS,
Isabella de la Gryffin
Barony of Oldenfeld, Trimaris
Tallahassee, Florida

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