duck0987

All of the cast iron cook ware I have is about 50-75 years old, and acquired from yard sales. This is a great way to get good quality iron cookware at a next to nothing price.

The first thing to look at is the condition of the metal, is it pitted, warped, or cracked, most cracks will form near the handle in the side wall of the skillet. Do not worry about minor surface rust, greasy texture, or black scale, this can be cleaned off quite easily at home, but more on that later. If the pan is cracked, has heavy pitting, or is very warped leave it.

The next thing to look at is the name and size of the pan. The sizes of the pan is usually on the handle, and are usually numbered from 00 which are typical decorations, toys, or ashtrays, all the way up to 20, these are good for camping but not much use for home. The number has nothing to do with the physical measurement. Also the make of the pan is important, I typically look for it to have a "Griswold" or "Wagner" on the bottom of the pan, in my opinion they are very equal in cooking quality, but Wagner is typically cheaper, as Griswold tend to be more collectable.

A good place to start is with a number 8 skillet, they are some of the most common and can typically be found for 10 - 25 dollars depending on the name and condition, my no. 8 Wagner was found at a garage sale for $12 and it was in near perfect condition.

There are books out there detailing what cast iron is worth to collectors, eBay does have a lot of these, but shipping can get dangerous due to its weight.

Now that you have found your rusty scaled skillet how do you clean it? I use the method my grandfather an avid collector used. The first thing to do is try a brillo pad, in some cases if you have a lot of scale sand paper or a utility knife for scraping may be in order. Get off the major chunks; in the case of pans that are already clean a brillo pad is all you will need.

If your pan needs more work after the first once over, the best way to remove scale and rust is a lye bath. Go to your local grocery store or hardware store, and pick up a can of "Red Devil Lye". It may be difficult to find (I don't believe Wal-Mart carries it any more, as it is also used to make Meth).

Lye is simply a strong base, Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH), To prepare your lye bath find a PLASTIC container fil with warm water, enough to be able to totally cover the cast iron piece. Add Lye to this until it is saturated, and put your cast iron into the bath and let it sit for a few days or up to a week or so. Once the pan is clean remove it from the bath, and brillo pad it again with a lot of water to remove any residual rust, scale, and lye.

Once the pan is clean, dry and immediately cover the entire with crisco, the bare iron will begin to rust almost instantly. Place the skillet into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes to season it, this seasoning will build with each use.

A few words of warning about Lye:

1. It is very caustic and exposure to your skin should be very limited, read the side of the bottle, they are not kidding when they say this is nasty stuff. I put my cleaning bath outside with a lid (old rubber made tubs work great)

2. Only do this on cast iron, do not try this on cast aluminum. Aluminum will react with the Lye producing Hydrogen gas, and you know what happened to the Hindenburg

3. If you do get it on your skin, you will notice an oily feeling that is the lye; use a lot of water to wash your hands to remove all the lye.

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"I've got a lot of friends who don't know how to cook, which I could never understand because not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck." --Robert Rodriguez