Cast Iron in its Native Habitat: Smoothing Rough Iron

Hello the mudbrooker, here today I'm going to make a video showing you how to smooth raw

cast

iron

. You may have seen this in my other use of my live stream last time. This is a great number 14. Birmingham Red Mountain Stove and Range. series pan and the inside is quite

rough

and I will show you the right way or at least one of the right ways to smooth it out. It would also work if you have something like a newer cabin and you don't really like the

rough

pebble texture and you want to soften it up a bit, it's the same technique so before we start I want to thank my clients on patreon k kissed benedict riggers joy jones damien bamer leo theodore engelke valentin thomann rudy vellano kiosby john wheeler cj sarah and jim price in your honor I'm going to have a little bourbon, a little bulit or boule, however you pronounce it, this is for you, your support is greatly appreciated since that I started being a member of my channel.

I also have members to thank those in need. homesteader brian's aquatic grandpa lobster comfort doll killer miller lance allen seasick d and concrete sailors and in your honor I'm going to drink even more bourbon your support is greatly appreciated and I thank each and every one of you for your continued support yes' I would like to join the channel. There's a button below that you can click or you can go to Patreon and become a patron anyway. Put this aside. Move my camera down and we'll get started a little bit. That's good now that you're softening.

cast

iron

, you don't want to use a grinder or anything like that because yeah, flip it over, here we go, when you smooth cast iron, you want to use a random orbital sander like this if you use a grinder, especially with a hard grinding wheel.

It will scrape the bottom of the pan and end up with thin spots that can cause cracks or warping. It is also not necessary to remove all the bites. It has quite a few different types of bites. If there are a lot of small, light pits down here, there are some stronger pits and by trying to get the really deep pits out again you will end up making thin spots which will cause it to heat unevenly and can crack and warp. Much easier because it's not heated evenly, it's a pretty simple process. I have a coarse 50 grit sand pad on this and I'm just going to run this over the inside and smooth it out, I broke it up and I forgot something.

This creates quite a bit of dust and I'm doing it indoors so I have my vacuum cleaner and I'm going to use this to try to control the dust a little bit so this is about half an hour of work and I went through three sanding discs on the layer of 50 grit and you can see that it really made a big difference, it removed a lot of those really fine pits, there are still quite a few medium and heavy pits down here, but that's it. the more I have to go because just by running my hands over the surface instead of having sharp edged holes everywhere, I took the edges off and smoothed them out a little bit, so what I'm going to do now is scrub. this, turn on my wood stove and I'm going to put a couple coats of seasoning on it just to keep it from rusting and if I still have time tonight, I'll probably put three or four coats on it to help fill it out. these holes a little now, if I were doing this with a new tray I would get a much smoother result because with the holes you are trying to remove all the surface and get the surface down to the depth of the bottom of the holes and there is a lot of material to remove, which I really don't want to remove as much with a rough tray as a cabin.

What you're doing is knocking down the high points and lowering them so there's a lot less material. material to remove and you will get a much smoother finish. Now I only use the coarse grit discs on this and I'm not going to go finer because you don't need to polish them to a mirror finish. I've seen a lot of people do that and it's just not necessary to do it it just makes it harder to season and this is pretty fluid and anyway I'm really happy with the way this turned out I'm going to turn on my stove I'm going I'll scrub this up and I'll come back once it's up and running.

Okay, my oven hasn't reached the right temperature yet, but before long it will be insanely hot. I warmed it up well. I'm going to give it a coat of Easy Beezy. I've been using this quite a bit lately. A guy here on YouTube named Steven Strawn sells it and it works great. Now any seasoning you make in the oven is really good. I'm just putting on a base so this will still have to break up after we get it we'll season it in the oven but this gives you a really good start so I like it I really like it anyway rub it in a little bit . take a cloth, spread it well, wipe off the excess and give it a nice even coat, a thin even putty, cover everything well, see it looks good, get the other side and the outside.

I like this bar, it is very useful to apply and not. this is not a sponsored video, give it a good coat on the back, we have it all, put some on the handle, let's touch my stove, it's very hot there and down here and in the oven for an hour or so. I'll be back and we'll probably give him two or three dates tonight. Well, you can probably see that the needle on my heat meter is practically stuck to the oven and that's where you want it to be to season the things that we're going to get. this guy outside, oh yeah, that looks good, put them here, bring it up so you can see, here we go and this is going to be too hot right now, that's 410 degrees, too hot to put the next layer on, so I I will prepare This on my little stands here I'll let it cool a little bit and then I'll come back and put another coat on it.

Put it back in the oven. This has cooled to about 250 degrees, so I can give it another coat. Now take it. On my rags the color looks a little uneven and that's because the tight parts look a little darker than where they are softer, but that won't be a big deal. I don't think we'll see each other later, but turn it around. On the other side, build up a little, you have to be careful when doing this because it is still quite hot and you will burn yourself if you touch the bare iron with your hand.

I also have a little more in there than I need right now, but I'll wipe it down again with a cleaner cloth. This one has a lot of easy beezy uh buildup and you don't need that much in there, so I'm going to clean it up. remove it so you have just a little thin layer, leave my mango nice and ready to go back in the oven. I'll give it one more application after this, but I'll probably skip it and show you what it is. finishes like when it's done, okay, I'm going to take this out because it's three layers of easy now I'm going to take it out and we'll take a look at it, come up here, you're pretty hot, but it looks pretty good.

It's also too hot for my hot pad, but it looks pretty cool. I'm going to let this cool and give it a coat of clarified butter and let it finish cooling and see how it goes. Late tomorrow morning we'll turn the stove on again and settle this. See you tomorrow here we are the next day and it occurred to me that this might not have been the best demonstration of how to smooth cast iron because I have to leave a lot of the old pits in there because you're not really going to get them out without taking out tons and tons and tons of metal, so like most people ask me about how to smooth cast iron, I have here a series of eight loggia, this one is pretty new, this is the current production style, this is what you get if you go to the store right now and you buy a number eight skillet and I softened it, I didn't remove the seasoning.

I just sanded it, this is about 45 minutes of work. If you look closely you can see that there are some deeper holes here and there that I didn't take out and there are a bit of holes around the edges that aren't actually holes. just little bottoms of the holes and I didn't take them out because it's already very nice and soft and you reach a point of diminishing returns. In the first 15 or 20 minutes you will get three quarters of the way to this point. It really smooths it out a lot and after that it takes longer and longer to get the surface down to the point where you get the really fine little pits and it's not really worth the time and trouble to get it all out, yeah can. you want, but you know it might take you a couple more hours to get everything completely smooth, but anyway, what I'm going to do is turn on the stove, I'm going to put on a layer of seasoning. in this just to show you how this pick takes the seasoning after it's been sanded and while this is in the oven seasoning, I'm going to break into this pan this big old bastard here frying up a bunch of potatoes for breakfast or well.

It's getting close to lunchtime so I'll come back once everything's hot on the stove and we're ready to start cooking well my stove's hot my pan's nice and hot it takes a couple temps here oh. Yes, heat it up well and it's even running at about 380 375 degrees and load it with some clarified butter. I hope I have enough because when I do my first pan cooking, I almost always cook potatoes with a fairly generous amount of oil. there you don't want to fry them but you want to have enough to go up the sides and have a pretty good amount in the pan so I'm going to get this here oops splash me with hot butter that's not good and I think I'll eat some more than that, a couple more good sized pieces, this is not enough to have a little bit of cooking oil on hand, but that should be enough for you once you have it all melted, put the oil very hot and I.

I'll throw away my potatoes. The reason I first use potatoes when I smash them in the pan is because they shed starch and that starch will get into all the cracks and crevices and char, that's what gives you your nice black surface and seals those cracks and crevices. so that the surface of the pan is nice and smooth and the food itself is not in direct contact with the griddle, that's what makes things non-stick is the fact that you're not quite touching me without touching the griddle I think I'm hot enough with my oil I cut my potatoes lengthwise so they cover more area these guys fry I have that pan in the oven and it's heating up nicely at the moment I'm done with these they should be almost ready to check them out and see how they do.

I'll try to cover the bottom of the pan as much as you can, push these guys in a little bit, yeah. It'll work, leave the rest of my potatoes aside, I've got to grab my salt and pepper, you can keep an eye on them for me, a little bit of salt, a regular shot of pepper, but we'll get these guys going. I like to scrub the potatoes at the bottom. of the pan a little bit because that helps incorporate the starch and I'll rotate the pan so it heats evenly on all sides. I think I want it to be a little bit warmer, so I'm going to bring this in a little bit closer. on the heat, uh, okay, I'm going to leave these guys in the pan for a minute, I'm going to bring this over here, set it in that cold pan, it's still hot so they'll keep cooking for a while and I'm going to go down here, grab that small Lodge type frying pan and see how it goes.

Oh yeah, look, it was seasoned really well. You can see it soaked in well, not a bead formed and it just sits and sits on the surface like it would if I cleaned it with a grinder or wire wheel when spring comes, once I can get back to work outside I'm going to make some videos showing the wrong way to season a pan and what makes it really difficult to season and why in the meantime. I hope you enjoyed this video, if you'd like, hit the join button or visit me on Patreon to see my next video.

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