Hello from the midwest

[JeanC]

Twin cities, Minnesota here. Been lurking for awhile, thought I would introduce myself. Love this site. Best advice here for certain on cleaning and caring for the cast iron. I cringe seeing how folks are using self clean ovens and fires to clean vintage cookware. I have a #10 that is a spinner and an 8 Griswold with fire damage from back in my twenties. No internet back then with information at the ready. I was told to throw it in a bonfire and pick it out the next morning. So NOT a safe way to clean it.

I'm now a little more informed because of this site. Thank you for such a great site. I love all the information here. Has helped me a lot in identifying what I have so far.

I've got a lye bath full and a stack waiting. I'm having so much fun finding it and getting it all shiny new again. But the using of it is the most fun.

I back cakes...brownies...and cook just about everything in CI now. Wish I had found this site years ago!!

The good news about my fire damaged pans is the spinner is still usable and the Griswold has just a little bad area on a small part of its side...it cleaned up well and seems to of seasoned great. I gave it to my son and his wife says she loves it. So yay!! But please stop putting them in a fire. I would love them to be around another few more hundred years for our grandkids.

 

[Steve Stephens]

I cringe seeing how folks are using self clean ovens and fires to clean vintage cookware.

You can stop cringing about cleaning cast iron cookware in a self cleaning oven. The oven gets up to around 900 deg. F which is well below a "dull cherry red" that I have read is 1175 deg. or 1475 deg. Whichever it is there is plenty of a margin of error. If the oven got hot enough to warp or oxidize cast iron it would harm the oven and stove as well. As long as iron is heated and cooled reasonably slowly (and it will in a self clean oven) and it's not heated more than a DULL cherry red there should be no problem at all.

 

[JeanC]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I understood wrong, that self clean ovens temps can vary quite a bit. I don't know that much about those, so thanks. There is varing degrees of information and opinions on the SCO method.

Have a great day!
Jean