How badly damaged?

[Brian K]

I'm a cast iron noob and ran into a problem today after heavily scrubbing my Lodge cast iron skillet. Everything was fine then I decided I was going to season my skillet. I don't know what i'm doing and kind of started using it initially when I bought it without doing anything special. I stored it with a thick layer of oil a few times which might have contributed to this (bad idea). Well today I scrubbed it very violently and after seasoning it, it now looks extremely rusty looking (it didn't before I started). Did I scrub it down too much? (I used a scotch heavy sponge and a metal chain thing I got on amazon)

I was hoping to get some feedback if it's still okay to use or if I should just buy another one. Thanks for your help.

 

[Doug D.]

From the looks of the handle design, you have a Lodge which was originally sold "pre-seasoned". Whatever has happened since has probably not physically damaged it, but it looks like you just need to strip it down to bare iron and start over.

See: http://www.castironcollector.com/cleaning.php Then: http://www.castironcollector.com/seasoning.php

 

[Brian K]

Thank you! That's good info. I will give the aerosal oven spray cleaner method a try and scrub it down with a steel pad. I don't think I can make it any worse at this point so I might as well experiment on it :icon_thumbsup: Live and learn.

 

[Brian K]

I followed the guide using the Aerosol method and it turned out amazing! I wanted to post my results in case someone else is like me.

The 2 on the right are the ones that I cleaned off the lodge seasoning and re seasoned. The one on the left is the lodge that comes preseasoned that I didn't touch.





closeup of finished result

 

[Steve Stephens]

What a nice job of transforming your skillets. Cast iron is a great material as it can be renewed to almost like new over several centuries. Nice job Brian.