Rusty Cast Iron Skillet Restoration

Hi everyone, I'm Steven Strong from Cast Iron Cookware, where you can find information to help you better collect, restore, and use

cast

iron

cookware. Today I'm going to restore this

rusty

little frying pan number four Wagner Sydney oh 1054b and we're going to do it right before we start. I just want to thank everyone who purchased my product, Easy Cast Iron Seasoning. Purchasing this product helps keep this channel running and I just want to thank you so much. Let's continue with our video, as I said at the beginning, we're going to take this little

rusty

frying pan and it's a Wagner Sidney-o number four and you can see it's covered in rust.

I think maybe someone has started the

restoration

process. I even put it in a live bath and never did anything with the rust. Now, when it comes to restoring

cast

iron

, there are three particular ways that most people who do

restoration

s like to follow. One is the one that everyone loves and that is using an electrolysis tank. Now everyone does it. I don't have one, but I will say that this electrolysis will remove all organic compounds, rust, and just about anything else. Now, when it comes to rust alone, many people use a vinegar scrub and when it comes to removing old seasonings, if not.

You don't have access to electrolysis, you can use a live bath. Another variation of the lye bath is the easy-to-remove-from-the-oven spray method that also works. Today we will use the water and vinegar scrub and change the camera. angle and we'll start now I'll say this, you can soak it in vinegar, but I have this solution that is 50 water, 50 percent vinegar and I'm using white vinegar with five percent acidity now, if you use two strong vinegar solutions, you can damage your cast iron, so I took white vinegar with an acidity of five percent. You know five to ten percent will be fine.

You don't want to go over that. Now we're going to take the five percent acidity and dilute it by half. so we have two and a half percent acidity once I drop it in with 50 water, now you can go ahead and soak it, but I find that I use a lot less vinegar with this particular method, especially if you have a place where you can do it now. I have the stainless steel sink here in my studio now, which is really very useful. I'm going to spray it and rub it a little bit to try to get the thicker outside part off, the part that's going away.

To make it come off easier, rinse it and then spray it again and let it sit for no more than 30 minutes because if you already have pits on the surface, the vinegar will go right after and those pits will get bigger and bigger. give us a little rinse and we actually look pretty good, but they still have a little rust on them, we'll go into all those little nooks and crannies as we go. I have a nice little line here. It looks like it was left in water or maybe a live bath, put that line up just a little bit so it already looks a lot better, there's still a little bit of rust here and there so I'm going to go ahead and spray it on, now it's really liberally strange. if it comes back before the 30 minutes are up and it starts to dry out, go ahead and give it another squirt or two just to keep it moist, that's the key to keeping it moist, so we're going to start our watch, we're going to go back.

In 30 minutes I'll probably come back a couple of times between now and then just to make sure it's not dry to give it another squirt. Well, it's been 30 minutes. I came back here about halfway through and gave it another spray. Let's take a look here now. This is just a plastic scrubber, it is not abrasive at all, it is not metallic, of course, you can use an SOS pad or what is commonly called Brillo pad or fine steel wool with soap. Once I get the initial rust off, I'll probably go to a soap pad like that, okay, let's give us some weird rinse water to get to my faucet, now I'm going to bring out the big guns, this is a soap pad from Great value, it's the same thing people would call a Glitter pad.

It's a fine soap-infused steel wool, it won't damage the surface at all, so let's give it a good scrubbing with this foreign product. I would use this and leave it on my more expensive pieces without worrying. There are some who don't, but me personally. I don't see any problem with that, that's the inside now, this particular handle on this piece here has a lot of little cracks, you just have to work with them individually, okay, once we get to the tricky parts and then we can put it on. our attention on the exterior parts. I noticed a ring and it seems to go all the way around.

I think someone had it in a live tank at one time or another and it wasn't completely submerged and what happened is it left a bit of a rust ring around it, you can hardly see it, you can mostly feel it right there, it's you might be able to see the line and it's a level line so it was obviously underwater like caulked on its side which caused I have a water level line there so this has an outside heat ring so Let's try to get into that little groove. I'm going to rinse it. There are quite a few stains, especially around here.

I don't think it's seasoning, I think it's just staining, this thing probably hasn't been treated very well in its life, let's give it another good scrub everywhere, especially on the inside surface of the cooking surface because that's really What matters when used, as far as I can tell, there is no pitting on this piece, mostly just stains, probably because it was in a restoration process. It stopped halfway through now, if all the roofs weren't falling down we could go ahead and do it. another scrub with vinegar but the rust is pretty much gone unless we have a problem with flash rust and I have an answer for that so before I rinse it off next time I'll show you what we do with flash rust now. once you get a piece completely stripped down to the bare metal and then give it a good wash while it dries, when the water evaporates you will end up with a film of rust over the entire cast iron piece which is called flash rust.

I have found the best and I am going to show that in this video it is while the piece is still wet before evaporation occurs. I like to use hot water to rinse, the hotter the better, the reason is that it heats up the pan. way the oil will saturate the butter, so while the beat is still wet, grab your seasoning oil, whatever oil you use. Personally, I like to use the easy one because it's my go-to product and it does a great job. I'll go ahead and apply it. Easy to use or season oil on the cast iron while it's wet, the oil will displace the water so sudden rust doesn't have a chance to take hold or even think about starting and then once you clean it well you'll be fine.

We're going to heat the water up as much as we can while it's still wet and warm enough to accept some easy Beezy. I'm going to take some of my easy Beezy and rub it in. all over the cast iron before it dries out while it is still wet, what happens is before the flash rust has a chance to take hold during the evaporation process, easy beeasy or oil, you can use any seasoned oil you prefer . I like the easy peasy because it's very easy so after you get a nice generous amount of oil you want to massage it over the entire surface of the cast iron and what that does is the oil will displace the water.

Rust doesn't have a chance to take hold. paper towel and just go ahead and dry the piece with a paper towel as much as possible, it's a paper towel infused, let's get a new towel, start with a handle and voila, we have a clean, somewhat stained piece of cast iron , without any sudden rust. and I still have the little line if you can see it everywhere but it's going to disappear in the seasoning process and you can even see the line on the inside maybe the camera will show it. I have the line on the Inside and Outside it was evidently in a bath of bleach or even water sitting at any angle on this line and the water evaporated to a level that left a water line much like the ring around the tub. on those really bad work days, but uh.

It's still there and it's still stained, but the seasoning process will cover all of that and this piece will look like new once we put a few coats of seasoning on it, so let's start the seasoning process now that we've applied the oil. While it was wet, I wiped off the excess so we already have our first layer of seasoning there and it will be there as a protector until you put it in the oven. I always recommend being about 30 or 40 degrees above the smoke point of your oil. with my product I usually use 480 to 500 degrees just to get a good seasoning and I let it run for about 30 minutes to an hour, let it cool, you know, don't take the pieces out until you can handle them. let it cool to a couple hundred, maybe 250 degrees, handle it with oven mitts, strange seasonings, wipe off all the excess and we'll do about three rounds of this and we'll come back and take a look at this each round and just look at how good it is. going well, our first round is over and it's still a little warm and this is what we have, it's starting to look pretty good, let me put the camera down and we'll apply our second layer of visibility, it's still a little warm.

I don't want to put it on my counter, so I'm going to put it on my little lady Bess piece. I'll make sure it covers the entire piece. My fabric is not completely impregnated. Still, this is my go-to application cloth. Make sure you get a good coating. You can apply it as liberally as needed, as for applying it on the outside, we'll just make sure to remove all the excess once. We apply it, we apologize for missing the center of the frame. Well, now I'm going to take my request calls and save it. I'm going to grab my cleaning cloth and one of the reasons I like to use the covers is because you can twist them. things from the inside out and get a nice dry spot, so I'm going to buff all the excess inside and out and one thing you want to make sure is that you don't need to, but you want to make sure you buff through the lettering because if you don't you do, it will fill up and you will lose that cute logo.

If you have a piece with a nice logo like we do here, polish it, so we'll put this one back in the oven starting in 30 minutes to an hour at 500 degrees, then we'll see what our second round comparison looks like, like this that's okay, we take out our third round and it's starting to look a little better, so let's go ahead, put the camera down and apply our last coat of seasoning to this piece, okay, it's still pretty hot, so let's take our easy bees and just go around the edge, go ahead and go around the outside, take our application cloth and make sure everything is covered now.

We're going to take off the wax like it's Karate Kid wax on wax okay we've applied our easy bees for our last layer of seasoning and I also want to say a lot of people ask me when do you put your pieces in the oven. you go backwards or up, what is it, if you put too much oil, do it backwards, but we don't want to put too much oil, the trick and the main thing, the number one season in cast iron is less. it's better, so if you've buffed off all the excess residue, it doesn't matter which way you tilt it because it won't run, there won't be any stains now, if you leave too much there, there may be stains left.

No matter which way you place it, if you polish it properly, you'll have less smoke and won't have to worry about dripping. Many people will put their pieces in the oven and let them run for about 15 minutes. and let them rise, you know, three hundred or four hundred degrees, they'll take them out and clean them again, it really makes a difference, so less is better, so we're going to put this in the oven for us in the last round and do a final comparison okay, we finally got it out of the oven and it cooled down so we can see it properly again.

This is the finished product. Now we still have a little bit of stain, but it will eventually go away. The interior looks great. nice and smooth and the little ring that was there still has a little bit of evidence on it and that will fill in over time especially if I keep using it and plan on a couple of things for which seasoning is number one: protecting the cast. iron rusts and number two makes it easier to clean now it becomes a little more nonstick. I made a video in the past where I demonstrated that even a rusty pan can be nonstick if you use the right temperature. and the right amount of oil, but it helps a little with the non-stick, but this one turned out great and will get better with time.

I hope you enjoyed the restoration process, removing the rust through the vinegar and water solution and the scrub and also the seasoning to get started, putting on the first few coats, getting it ready for use and if so, don't forget to subscribe , hit the notification bell and I promise I'll keep posting more and I just want to say thank you. again for looking at the cast iron cookware before I go, I would like to share something with you very quickly in First Peter chapter 5 verses 10 and 11 it says butthe God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory through Jesus Christ after that. you have suffered a time become perfect establish strength and establish yourselves to him be glory and Dominion forever and ever amen I just want to say share the word and be a blessing thank you foreigner