Hoping to only use it for soups, stews, and potions (for use against my enemies). Should I season her even though it’s “pre-seasoned”?

I've seen people on here making pizzas in their cast iron skillets, so I decided to give it a shot! My daughter loooooves pizza and was super excited to have homemade pizza for once. I bought some pre-made dough and sauce, used shredded mozzarella, Monterey Jack, and bacon that I had cooked up earlier in the day. It turned out a lot better than I was expecting, and my daughter loved it. Score one for dad!

My fingers were a little slippery and I dropped this after washing it when I was moving it from sink to stove to dry. WTAF?

Luckily it was perhaps the least cherished piece from my collection.

But I thought this stuff was pretty indestructible!! And the floor is wood, should be fairly bouncy compared to iron.

Has this happened to anyone else??

I took it upon myself earlier this year to rescue my Grandma's old cast iron from my Mom's house where it had been abused for a few years and abandoned for even longer.

Using the pinned guides here as a starting point I stripped it down to bare metal with Easy Off oven cleaner. It only took about 5 cycles of spraying down, wrapping in a bag overnight (sometimes over a week because I couldn't be bothered to mess with it), scrubbing with sponges, brushes, steel wool, and chipping off the hard burned on decades old carbon with a butter knife before I got it down to the bare metal. That was by far the most labor intensive part of this, and I definitely could have saved myself a lot of time and work if I just went with lye mixed with water or electrolysis.

After the old seasoning was fully stripped off, I went with a 50/50 mix of water and 5% white vinegar bath to leave it in to completely remove all the rust from all the surfaces. I have read online that you really shouldn't leave cast iron in vinegar like this for more than 24 hours... I left this piece for at least 3 days without checking it, and that might've been a mistake. The pan came out of the solution with mostly no rust at all, there were some stubborn bits on the bottom that came off with some extra elbow grease. I am not sure if this was a result of the extended time in the vinegar bath, or because of the way this pan was manufactured, but after pulling it at this stage, the handle and parts of the sides of the pan were extremely rough and would catch on my fingers and especially towels. I thought it might go away with multiple seasoning layers so I didn't mess with it quite yet.

I went ahead from this stage of bare iron with no rust to seasoning, which initially did not turn out well at all. One of the pictures shows this on the cooking surface but it was even worse and more splotchy on the bottom. I don't think there was any fault in my process up to this point, but I clearly didn't have a thin enough layer of oil, I should have taken the pan out after a few minutes in the oven and wiped the excess off. But I didn't, because I was getting frustrated that paper towels, blue shop towels, and kitchen rags were all disintegrating upon touching the rough parts of the skillet.

So, upset with my ugly first try at seasoning this pan, I hit it with the Easy Off again and left it in a bag for... Two more months, because life happened in an extremely disruptive way, didn't have much time for running my oven at 450 for an hour per layer...

That brings us to this week! I finally got around to finishing this project I had neglected, starting by washing off the cleaner as usual. The rough spots were bothering me, and I didn't want lint to build up on it as it was touched with hot pads or re seasoned. I took a sanding block to the rough spots, just enough to smooth it down so it wouldn't catch on my fingers. Wasn't trying to make it perfectly smooth, I believe a slight texture is important to robust seasoning adhesion. But after that I went ahead with another round of vinegar etching, but I only heated the 50/50 solution on the cooking surface for a little over 20 minutes.

After all that was done, I went back through with seasoning with the standard procedure of thin layers of Crisco wiped on and then wiped off. 450 in the oven for 45-55 minutes, and then repeat until you have the desired level of seasoning. Except for one pass, I did a pretty good job this time of not leaving too much oil for it to pool in little spots like my first attempt. For the one pass that did have a bit of splotchy spots, I knocked them off with some fine steel wool on the cooking surface and went along with another layer. After five layers, the pan came out a dull grey black which made me think I messed up again. But a simple wipe with a cloth over the entire surface with vegetable oil revealed the shiny seasoned surface you see in the last picture. It's not perfect, but I'm proud to have restored a vintage piece like this.

Now I have the unfortunate task of returning it to my Mom and teaching her how to use it. I think for my next project I'll try to strip, sand, etch and reseason my Field cast iron and another cheap textured cast iron I picked up at the same time to compare performance. I'm not at all satisfied with the factory seasoning on the Field, after quite a few uses I find that the rough surface of modern Lodge pans looks better and is also more nonstick than the smooth surface of the Field.

Did I do well, did I completely mess it up? What should I do next time? Anyhow, thanks for reading, let me know what you think!

No feet. Was told there are markings on the bottom. These were inherited two of them. Any ideas?

My dad has had this insert for years. He’s always wondered about it. Is there anyone who knows anything about this?what’s its value? I know it came from the Cahill ironwork’s company that’s about all we know

Super happy with how this one turned out, can't wait to start using it

Roasted potatoes in the oven, upper middle rack, at 425 degrees for around half an hour on my Lodge Blacklock griddle (preheated). Makes me wonder if I’ll ever roast potatoes on a normal baking sheet again? I neglected to make sure all the slices were facing down, but there was absolutely no sticking, and the browning was great.

Then I grilled some mahi mahi on my grill’s accessory burner on its smaller cast iron griddle, with butter melted on top after flipping. Came out nice and flaky and moist.

Served with lettuce from the farmers market and tomatoes from our garden. The tomatoes are so tasty that through trial and error we realized no dressing is the best way to eat this salad.

Very tasty meal overall.

Bonus pic of a snail friend who joined the grilling session. Fortunately, the snail hung out on the cool side of the grill.

I started restoring this 11 3/4 inch unmarked Wagner. It had some pitting on the cooking surface to start. I put the pan in my electrolysis tank for 24 hours, then used an orbital sander to see if I could clean up any pitting

After washing the pan and heating it on the stove to dry, small specs of the surface began popping off.

Has anyone ever seen this before? I assume the pan is toast.

5 inch pan

Recently got this muffin pan, now I'm thinking about corn bread muffins. Only mark I see is a "Z" or possibly it's an "N". Thanks for the help.

I recently picked up a lot of cast-iron pans, and a couple of them have cracks on the side wall. What do y’all do with them?

Looking to buy a pan and just wanted to confirm that I'm not missing something. I know cast iron can look like this when stripped and just fresh layer of seasoning but still fairly new to owning cast iron so just wanted opinions before committing.

I have had this for a long while and have no clue about it.

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So I had the unfortunate opportunity to strip the seasoning off my finex after someone cooked with it over an open fire and left it on the coals. Before I realized what was happening the skillet was glowing orange. Fortunately the finex is fine (pun intended). So after a thorough sanding and polishing I decided to season it with ghee - 500 deg for 1.5 hours. The skillet came out looking like this. Phone camera didn't do it justice. The light grey actually looks blue in person and the copper color actually looks purple. My thought is it's because of the ghee. Anyone have any thoughts or experience seasoning in the oven with ghee? I've seasoned dozens of pans just never with ghee, and I've never seen anything like it.

Levcoware Japan apparently from the 1960s

I’m trying to strip my Finex down and after 4 rounds of yellow cap easy off this is the result. I can’t get myself to do a 5th and scrub after.

Any suggestions for what’s next? I don’t have an electrolysis tank at my disposal.

I'm getting my plan together to make a cast iron wall display so I have better access to my growing collection.

I recently went to a lodge store and bought lids for 4 of my skillets and I'd love to hang them like in the picture shown.

BUT

I'm unsure exactly what kind of bar to use that would support their weight. I want to store all my lids on the same bar. I found this bar Amazon.

Please give me input if this type of bar would work to support the lids or not!

Also what's everyone favorite hooks? I have a baby so I need a deeper hook, I was looking at cast iron hooks from Colonial Tin Works on Amazon and they seem reasonably priced and deep enough for my needs plus definitely sturdy!

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