ID help - never seen this before

SpurgeonH

Active member
Hey guys, I'm at a friend's house for a New Year's party and, of course, we got talking about cast iron. He brought out a skillet he found the other day and asked me to identify it. I'm stumped.

It has a raised number 9 and a reinforced handle. The weird thing is, it has no heat ring and no molder's mark. Maybe the heat ring was an outside ring and has worn off? Or been ground off? I would say it was very early Lodge (maybe Blacklock?) except for the lack of a heat ring and molder's mark.

Any ideas?





 
After zooming in on the picture, now i' wondering if there is an outside heat ring. Maybe the old crud is so thick it has evened out? Or maybe somebody smoothed it out?
 
It's an interesting one for sure . I have never seen an early straight sided skillet like that with a raised number on the handle . The number is usually on the bottom .

Get it into the E-tank . The bottom might have some markings on it .
 
I'm meeting my buddy for lunch today. He wants me to put this skillet in my lye bucket and clean it for him. Sweet! I really want to know what is under that crud! We'll know in a couple of days! Ha! ... except I'm gonna need a bigger boat ... uh, I mean, bucket. I don't think a number 9 will fit in the one I have.
 
I'm confident that skillet has a heat ring. Hopefully the lye will reveal a raised molder's mark near 6 o'clock.
 
The ridge on the handle is not consistent with what is seen being called "possible Blacklock".
 
Thanks guys.

Doug, I thought Blacklocks had a raised rib on the bottom? Is it longer than this one?

Also, I now have the skillet in my possession. Unless the lye bath proves me wrong, I am going with my initial impress that this skillet doesn't have a heat ring ... unless it has been worn/ground flat. I'll take some more pictures when I get home before I put it in the lye bucket.

There doesn't see. To be enough crud on the bottom to hide a ring, or a molder's mark ... unless it is a lot thicker than it looks and as been polished smooth over the years.
 
Doug's right. The rib is too tall for a possible Blacklock.

I have a Vollrath that had that much gunk around the outside of the bottom when I bought it. I had no idea it had a heat ring until it spent a night in the e-tank, even though the center area of the bottom was still clear enough to see the sideways 8 at the time that I had bought it.
 
It's in the lye now. This skillet seems to be a mystery. Can't wait to see what is under there. The handle looks more like a Wagner to me, but not quite, and the raised number indicates a totally different direction. Whatever it is, it should be a good user for him. It has a some wobble, but he bought it to be a pan he could use on the fancy outdoor grill/cooking station he built in his deck, so it should work fine. The cooking surface looks pretty smooth. Hope it stays that way when the old seasoning comes off.
 
Well, the mystery continues ...

I took the skillet out of the lye this afternoon to see how it was coming along. It appears the bottom has been ground. Not sure if it was a factory thing, or somebody else along the line. I'm guessing the latter. The interior of the pan is very smooth.

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I wouldn't rule out the foundry it was made in doing that. But if it was done by somebody down the line, that somebody was a machinist.
 
I wouldn't rule out the foundry it was made in doing that. But if it was done by somebody down the line, that somebody was a machinist.


Yep, the circles on the bottom are perfectly centered and the spaces between each line is consistent. Forgot to mention, the wobble it had before, is even worse with most of the seasoning off. It's a full blown spinner now.
 
Here's the skillet after cleaning and seasoning. The bottom is a little rough, but the cooking surface is good. Even though it is a spinner it should be good for what he will be using it for. He is going to use it exclusively on his grill.

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The only mark on the bottom is this dot ...

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I would say the dot is just a void and not an intentional mark. Interesting how the rings from whatever apparent machining was done are in it as well. One might be tempted to guess it might have been milled to flatten the bottom. Can the marks be seen at the center of the pan to tell if they are concentric or spiral there? If not milled, the rings would have to be an artifact of something done to the pattern before molding.
 
Interesting how the rings from whatever apparent machining was done are in it as well. One might be tempted to guess it might have been milled to flatten the bottom. Can the marks be seen at the center of the pan to tell if they are concentric or spiral there? If not milled, the rings would have to be an artifact of something done to the pattern before molding.

It's hard to tell if they spiral out. It doesn't look like it, but the grooves in the center area are harder to see. In the right light, the bottom looks like a vinyl record ... complete with gaps between each song. Hmmm... should I put it on the old record player and see what tune it plays?

Here are a couple close-up pictures of the middle. It's hard not to get a reflection with my phone.

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I don't see any "pinwheel effect" like the factory polish grinding of cooking surfaces achieved by both a spinning pan and a rotating stone grinding head. Odds are this was something done to the pattern that left marks, as I can't see how a mill head would dip into the hole.
 
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