Cooking surface on Lodge?

KMDoty

New member
As I said in my hello post, I have a few pieces of CI with sentimental value. My husband died in 2013, and this was his pet pan, he cooked everything in it (usually at high heat, I swear the man didn't know the stove burners went lower, lol).

After getting the crud off, this seems to be a post-1960 Lodge? The pics are after the lye bath but before seasoning. I swear I didn't believe in flash rusting until I saw it develop in front of me!

My question is about the texture of the cooking surface. It's much rougher than the flea market Wagner that I tested my cleaning process on. Is that normal for Lodge, or is this a messed up pan? Hope the pics show up.

Kathy
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50/50 white vinager for a half hour soak. Scrub with 000 steel wool. Gloves and eye protection is suggested. Follow the directions on this website for seasoning and cook with it. Bacon and such to start.

Many more great meals out of that pan
 
The texture is completely normal for a non machined surface. Probably smoother than most modern Lodges as it appears the mountains are missing. The valleys will fill in with seasoning and all will be well.

Hilditch
 
Polish grinding involved spinning the piece on a machine and applying a spinning grinding stone to its cooking surface and sidewalls. This eliminated many shapes like squares and gem pans. Post-casting, pans like this would have only been "tumbled" in a machine with metal bits to perform a de-burring and a rudimentary smoothing. Current Lodge post-processing includes steel shot-blasting and a cleaning bath with steel scrubbing media. Older unpolished pieces owe their smoothness, compared to modern Lodge, more to finer mold sand, blacking, and parting powder creating initially smoother castings.

More about CI cookware finishing: http://www.castironcollector.com/finishing.php
 
So, after 2 rounds of oven seasoning and a pound of bacon, the old girl looks much better!
I appreciate the info about the difference between machined and non machined pans, never thought about them being smoothed out after casting and how it was done?

I'm only posting a link because I can't figure out why the pics are so big even after I've resized them to 600 pixels tall, I also hope the google pic works because I'm already getting snarky comments on imgur and who,s got time for that!
https://goo.gl/photos/ZEzgYg5Nj8nMBLGA9
 
Looks like you did a good job Kathy.....FYI...When I set up my Imgur account I chose not to make my pictures publicly available and have never received any comments from day one. You are still able to copy and paste from Imgur and the link when posted here is accessible for all to see.
 
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