I came across this cast iron skillet that was really old and in bad shape. I tried everything I could think off to get off the many, many, old layers of grease and gunk build up. Boiling water, Bar Keeper's Friend, Steel Wool, and Wire wheel with a drill. None of those worked so I said screw it and went and got an 80 grit sanding disc for my 4" makita grinder and went to town on it. I got it back down to the bare iron and my question is how many cycles should I season it to have a sufficient coating?

Here are some before pictures of the skillet.

Here are some after pictures. I did 3 seasoning cycles in the oven. I'm not sure if that was too much, or not enough. Someone chime in if you know. I read that after you cook with it a while it will start turning back to the black color.

I would think your good to go now. Three seasonings should be enough.

You could've put it in a bead blasing cabinet. that works pretty good. Three times of seasoning should be good.

That's awesome - I love me some OLD black iron.

Get to cookin' in that thing. I'd bet that after a pone of cornbread or two, it would be black as the ace of spades.

Got bell peppers, onions, and shrooms in it as we speak.

Next time throw it in a fire, drink some cold beer, and save yourself a lot of work!

Lard works wonders on seasoning.

Some useful info...

http://www.gcica.org/clean-iron.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_5612856_identif ... llets.html

I do the fire for cleaning.

Three seasonings is what I do.


you should be good to go. It'll get darker with age, but It might take a while for it to get that deep black color.

My grandmother gave me this skillet last year. It belonged to her grandmother. She is estimating it's age at 200 years.

Steve,

I did some reading on the links that you posted, and the skillet I have is definetly pre 1905. Pretty cool, and that thing can cook a mean blackened grouper. mmmmmmmm.....