Stay away from steel wool - it's too abrasive, and any remnant wool fibres will rust in a day and may embed themselves in the surface you are trying to clean ands later promote more rapid corrosion. Use a good quality paste style metal polish. Or even Brasso from the deli if you can't find the paste stuff in tubes. If you do it regularly, you'll keep the job easy. Leave it for too long and it bakes on. It's a pretty aggressive mixture of stuff, a lot of it acidic sulphurous and nitrous compounds, emerging from the pipes at high temperatures and it can quickly etch its way into metals and onto surfaces.
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