Wagner Magnalite 4248P and a Lodge mini cauldron

S

SpurgeonH

Active member
I'm not sure what I bought, but I like 'em!

I'm assuming this little Lodge cauldron is for melting butter? It was only a couple of bucks and I thought it was neat.

The Wagner aluminum pot is my first piece of aluminum. I usually would pass (since it's not cast iron) but it looks to be in really good shape and if it cleans up nice I'll probably give it to my daughter as a wedding present. It was $30. He just got it in this morning and was firm on the price. I figured it was a fair number. I looked on eBay and saw some for more (and they didn't have the trivet that goes with it).



 
Magnalite kept Wagner from going under sooner than it did! I have a good number of their pieces. The newer ones dropped Sidney-O- just like the cast iron did when Wagner was bought out.
 
Small pots like yours were sometimes used to pour lead in oakum joints for cast iron drainage pipes in older construction. Might want to check before you melt butter in it.
 
Spurgeon, I haven't "done" many pans, but I'm testing all of them. I was told they were sometimes used to melt down lead for reloading..... I bought a batch of lead-tester sticks at Amazon...cheaper than Home Depot or Lowes.

https://www.amazon.com/3M-717834209...d=1484967170&sr=8-1&keywords=lead+test+sticks

You can line up your pans and test them one after the other until you get a positive; then discard that stick. (I haven't gotten a positive yet, but I haven't done even a dozen pans.)

Others here may disagree....
 
Might be a good idea. Pretty sure the damage has already been done to my brain though. When I used to go for long runs every Saturday, I would pick up tire weights and spare change I would find along the way. I had visions of stockpiling a bunch of scrap metal and turning it in for money. With my luck, all of those weights I carried in my hand for 20+ miles were made of lead. (Which maybe means my IQ is dropping, and my memory is fading, from contact with lead instead of the dementia I blame it on. Ha!)
 
Spurgeon, I like your roaster. If you get a chance could you post a top view picture of your little Lodge please? I don't think I have seen one like it before.
 
Spurgeon, I doubt that simply handling lead affected you, but heating and eating food from a piece of CI that was used to melt lead is surely a bad idea. I agree with Donna about testing pieces for which you lack a provenance. I would suspect smaller pots like your butter melter of having been so used.
Also, thanks to Donna for her reference to the test sticks--just one of the many things I never heard of. :frown:
 
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