I have spent the last three weekends messing around with different post-oxidation stabilization methods on an old batch of heavily pitted railway ties because I am utterly sick of getting orange dust all over my shop floor every time someone brushes past them. Everyone keeps recommending boiled linseed oil cut with mineral spirits, but every single time I apply it to high-porosity flake, it completely destroys the dry, dusty matte aesthetic and turns the iron into this weirdly dark, gummy amber mess that takes literal weeks to cure if the ambient humidity is higher than thirty percent. I switched over to torching the piece up to around 200 degrees and rubbing in a paraffin and beeswax mix instead. The wax gets drawn right into the micro-fissures through capillary action, locks the loose structural scale in place so it stops sloughing off, and leaves the actual visual surface looking virtually untouched once it cools and buffs out. If you are building high-contact structural pieces and you still want that raw, excavated-from-a-swamp texture without turning into an oil painting, stop with the penetrol and start using heat and wax.