BSR Red Mountain No 12 - What to Do?

DavidL

New member
About 3 months ago I purchased what I thought was a beautiful skillet in need of cleaning. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that there was a patched hole in the middle of the pan. :cry: The hole looks like a casting flaw. It's about the size of a dull pencil point. Someone attempted to fill it with what looks like epoxy or something. I don't know what to do with it. I bought it for resell. Anybody have a suggestion?
 
Don't feel too bad David, I bought a crusty Wagner chicken fryer and discovered the same problem. It can be repaired but it will take away from the value. Alternatively you can cook cornbread in it a few times and the hole will fill in with carbon

Jack.
 
Jack, You've started something. I am on a journey to find the perfect pizza. Since this pan is large enough, I can cook a large pan pizza with no worries right? Do you have a pizza cooking recipe or advice to share?
 
David, I would like to see a picture of the pan if you could post one. That is a nice size for searing steaks also. It's always a crap shoot when you buy dirty pans, sometimes they clean up nice and sometimes not so much. I have a stack of pans that were a disappointment.
 
David,
Go to the search box in the upper right hand corner, click on CastIronCollector.com and search for pizza crust or pizza dough. You will find several recipes on this sight.

Jack
 
Thanks for the pictures, that's a really nice pan. I have no idea what that white stuff is that they used to fill the hole?
 
I don't know either. Someone said epoxy. It does have an epoxy look to it like it was paste going in and allowed to dry. It's a nice pan. If I list it, I would disclose the flaw and repair job but emphasize the great baking or searing potential of the pan.
 
This quote from this site has me wondering?

"All BSR
- Skillets: If heat ring, unbroken and inset
- Ridge on bottom of skillet handle does not flatten out at sidewall of pan"

Hilditch
 
The unmarked pan ID guidelines are intended to assist the novice and cover 99% of cases, but don't account for the occasional pattern variation. Looking at this pan as a whole, the reasonably experienced collector can tell it's BSR, with "Red Mountain" series markings; the more experienced one can tell you by its relatively small pour spouts and wall thickness that it's post-automation and likely was sold with a "Century" label affixed.

I wonder if the spot is more likely a slag inclusion than a repair. I have a Griswold Slant EPU with what appears to be a bit of aluminum embedded in the bottom, but does not reach the cooking surface. I think a flaw like a through-and-through void in the casting would be more easily just rejected, scrapped and melted down again.
 
Doug, Whatever the cause of the hole, it's through and through. Whatever was used as a filler can be seen from both the underside and the cooking surface. The other unusual thing is that it is convex on the underside so it spins and wobbles! Not typical of a BSR. So the question of the hour is, can this skillet be used safely for baking a pizza, cornbread, brownies, searing meat, etc.? If I list it on ebay, I will disclose what I know. My theory is that it is a factory flaw that someone took home to repair. It has no utensil marks so I think someone cast it aside until I came along and purchased it.
 
It will likely season over and be good to use for any of the dishes you listed. I dont know that I would use it full of oil for frying.
 
Follow up! I soaked the pan overnight in a new tank with clean water and anode. It registered the full 12 amps on the meter so I thought this would be a good place to start. I wanted to see what would happen to whatever it was that may have been stuck in that hole as patching material. Still not sure but it gave way to my little metal tool I use to scrape away carbon deposits. It was soft like hardened putty and gray in color. It is a clean hole in the bottom of the cooking surface. Now that it has a clean opening, does anyone know of a way to have it fixed so it can be used as a fryer? Otherwise I think it would be suitable to use in baking only.
 
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