Newbie with an ID Question

RickE.

New member
I'm not new to cooking but I do consider myself new to proper cast iron care. My inventory includes 4 different Lodge pieces purchased in the last decade. But when my wife's parents passed away over the last few years, she inherited a couple of cast iron skillets from their kitchen. They are sentimental to her...one was in good shape and used often, the other rusty and unloved.

Unfortunately while I'm a good cook, I didn't know much about cast iron care and got one of those chain mail scrubbers from Amazon to help with cleaning. (Unbeknownst to me I had screwed up the seasoning on my primary Lodge 12" skillet earlier leading to food sticking easily). And you guessed it, I scratched up and ultimately destroyed the decades-old seasoning of the WagnerWare 9" pan. My wife started wondering why little bits of dark crud was showing up in her morning eggs and I knew i had a problem.
Ugh.

I know the conventional wisdom around here is to use lye or electrolysis to rehabilitate CI cookware but since both looked in good shape without damage or cracks, I chose to use the oven cleaning method which worked well. I followed that with at least seven rounds of heat + flax seed oil and now I have two pans that look and perform well. I went ahead and re-seasoned all of my Lodge cookware in the same manner.

So I need some help in the ID of them. The WagnerWare -O- Sidney 9" Chef Skillet looks pretty easy according to the guides on this website but you guys know this stuff better than me to make a more precise determination (I'm guessing 1950s vintage?). The harder one is the smaller skillet which doesn't have any markings, other than a "3" on the top of the handle and a "0" on the reverse side of the handle. Not sure what to make of that. It's smooth in texture, like the Wagner, unlike all of the newer Lodges I own.
 

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The #3 is considered an unmarked Wagner before they started inscribing descriptive size markings ("6-1/2 INCH SKILLET"). Two scenarios are (1) it's unmarked Wagner, or (2) a copy that used a Wagner as or as basis for a pattern. The former is more likely if there are no unexpected imperfections and the cooking surface has been factory polish ground.

Related: http://www.castironcollector.com/unmarked.php#wagner
 
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