Fixing Broken Cast Iron

I dropped my precious corn stick pan and broke it. Can't win for losing. Need to stick the handle back on. It's in 2 pieces. So what glue do I use?
 
You could try JB Weld. Not sure if its a good idea for fixing a handle, but it may work.....just know that you cant take it back off, it turns to metal. I doubt its food safe either. I know nothing about actual welding, but Id shy away from that.
 
the chips are too small to weld. I considered doing nothing (looks ragged) or whacking the pan off right down the middle of the last corn stick (head scratcher pan). Either way I only get 13 corn sticks when I bake with both pans. 13 sounds unlucky but it's also a bakers dozen and I'm baking. So I looked into whether a bakers dozen is unlucky. Turns out the idea goes back to the late 16th century and is not considered unlucky.

I have some ultra high heat JB weld (good to 1000F) on order along with more air eraser compound. Both are materials that I can use on other projects. I already have some PVA. If I can get a good fit the food exposure to the epoxy will be very minimal. I'll blob it up on the back for strength. Worst case I don't use the last cavity, get a bakers dozen and it looks OK on the wall.

I'll post some pics if it turns out,.

I appreciate the ideas.

---------- Post added at 02:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:32 PM ----------

The ultra high heat JB weld just got here. It is a single part stuff with silica and other things. No VOCs. Sounds a lot like muffler patch and not an epoxy. Doesn't like small cracks so I will have to play some extra games on the backside and not count on the break line for any strength.

I think for turning a cracked pan into a usable cooker it would be good. Also for leveling a wobbly pan where it is only used on the outside. I do things with molding very flat surfaces using a piece of prepared glass as one side of the molding and some part as the other side. The some part ends up with a very flat surface molded onto it. The stuff supposedly turns out machine gray so redoing a pan bottom shouldn't be too ugly. I suspect spinners are only a few thousandths high at the rim so the molding would be thin and wouldn't have a lot of effect on heat conduction. The inside would still be uneven which hardly matters unless very minimal amounts of oil are being used. Surface prep. would be aggressive sanding or even better, sand blasting. Prepping the glass is the usual several buffed coats of hard wax, buffed and then PVA. The cost is low, the effort higher but for an otherwise really nice pan one wants to cook in...
 
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I started by sandblasting the backs with Green Dimond Sand @ 75 PSI. Then I blasted the fractured edge where it had seasoning on it with the air eraser running AEX @40 PSI.

The fit between the three pieces was very poor. Something got bent. I tried some dremel work on the fracture line but It didn't help. While I had the thing in my hand I made a back cut to create a groove for the Patch. Then I assembled as best I could and splinted everything with bits of bamboo skewers, super glue and baking soda.

My back cut came out well. The super glue got out of hand but solvent takes it off.
 

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I wanted to get into the Extreme Heat J B Weld and see how it works. Hard to work with. Very gritty ( steel fines in it) and sticky. Wouldn't trowel with the pallet knife. I tried heating it to drop the viscosity and it just set up in a flash. So I put a blob to one side with plastic wrap over it and I'll see how that sets up. I'll have to give it 48 hours at room temp to know anything.
 

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I hate to say it, but It may not be worth fixing, if you can. Im not being a snob, but it wont be worth anything as far as moey goes, and looks would be iffy. Id just buy another corn stick pan.....what brand was this one?
 
it's an old Lodge 2c two dot. It isn't worth fixing. But i have a huge amount of time into cleaning it up and the surfaces are better than the first I got. I replaced that one with a second and now that one is getting a large amount of time getting cleaned up. It's been bagged in oven cleaner for weeks. I gather people have trouble getting their corn sticks to release so the pans collect a huge amount of carbon. This gives poor definition in the corn stick molding.

I do a lot of molding. I like molded stuff. I have a carved wooden cookie mold (for springerle) hanging on the wall I need to try out some day. It has been hanging on the family kitchen wall most of my life. With the advent of the web I have learned the tricks to using it.

I also like technical challenges. The "bends" in the fragments mean the appearance from the front will never be good. I ground it today so I got it flat but no way to restore the texture unless I wanted to mold one on but I doubt the paste will take seasoning.

I have 3 sand blasters and today I compared what the tiny one and middle one will do. I know what The big one will do, I use it on all my smoothed pans. I masked some strips a couple cavities over and basted two stripes so I could compare the blasted surface to the raw (but seasoned) surface side by side, @ 70x magnification. The middle one,a spot blaster made a very slight change in the metal running fine green diamond sand at 75PSI. That blaster flows so little sand it does little. Good for flash rust and frosting prior to gluing. The tiny air eraser running 120 grit aluminum oxide at 40 PSI made no change in the surface whatsoever. Took the seasoning off but no change otherwise. I don't know if it will cut carbon. I doubt it. Good for a collector project, maybe for small stains, but the pattern is so small I can sign my name with it.

Aside from being non-stick my CI stuff doesn't cook worth a hoot. Slow to heat up, slow to cool down (= poor temp control), poor heat distribution. Tonight I made a balsamic reduction and I used high quality stainless thank you after the disaster using CI. I bake in glass or terra cotta and the corn stick pans have been my first venture into baking in CI. So far the surface roughness has been a problem. maybe they are supposed to be poor definition things just so they will work at all? Anyway i have a pair of glass corn stick pans coming in (Miracle Maize from the 40's) for CYA if the CI ones end up as decorations (with the one hanging in a bit of a dim corner.)

exploring blasted surfaces:
 

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next up was cutting a pair of 1/8" stainless rods for reinforcement. I don't need them for ultimate strength, I will need them for grinding the front.

I'm worried about micro cracking I can't see. CI don't bend under sudden impact and this is bent. So I added a piece of fine stainless screen. This will get fully bedded in.

I tried thinning the JB weld with some water (it won't set under plastic wrap). It tools better but the plastic will no longer peel off it. It also likes setting up in the jar so If I want to keep it I will have to baby it, which I don't like. I should have chosen a two part.
 

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Did an initial grind on the front. Not too awful. back looks very ragged and it can stay that way for the present. If it won't cook I can just sandblast it, Fill and texture the chip and hit it with some satin black rattle can for a decoration.

I stuffed my thumb into the grinder a couple days ago. A 36 grit flap wheel @ 11,000 in/min had me hurtin'. It'll grow back but until then I need to step away from things requiring a right thumb. Will need to suspend the narrative for a while.

I'll spot season it and see how it does at temp. I'm concerned about the differential expansion of the different materials.

Grinding the iron I'm finding some areas don't cut cleanly (both the Lodge and the Mexican thing). The metal sort of smears. And it's smearing onto that flap disk. Complete mystery. I expect this with stainless or aluminum, not iron. What little iron grinding I have done in the past was with an abrasive impregnated prep pad @ 20,000 rpm.
 

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With the bandages mostly off my thumb I'm back in action. I did an initial spot coat of oil on he repair, very thickly with a brush. Time to challenge this thin coats orthodoxy. I notice others around the web not bothering. This is not a challenging spot like a skillet bottom but I can still give it the punch test for flaking. It came out well. The repair held, the oil shiny in spots but completely hard and dry.


And while it is kinda screwed up (although seemingly an adequate cooker) I want to do an experiment with a food safe filler for pits, holes and cracks.
 

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