Restoring Antique Cast Iron

welcome back friends Corey from wandering weekends here a few weeks ago I posted a couple of pictures of some cast iron that I had restored and it was wildly popular on Facebook and Instagram I was surprised at how many likes and comments we got and everyone wants to see a video on how to restore it so today I'm going to do that video we're going to go over how to restore some of this antique cast iron I love this stuff I have deep southern Appalachian roots and this stuff was heavily used in those Hills but we're going to go over how to restore it we're going to turn something like this into something like this and we're also going to talk about what to look for if you're at a flea market an antique shop a yard sale what to look for on pieces that might be worth restoring so stay tuned [Music] okay friends let's talk about the pan that we are going to restore in this video and I chose this one because it's it's Unique it's uh it's not particularly valuable or anything like that but it's Unique I like it it's something I don't have yet in my collection and it's got good bones to it again we'll talk about that in just a second it's also going to allow me to show you uh some important techniques to it's got a lot of little nooks and crannies in it as you can see some sharp edges and there's some techniques to go on there there's nothing particularly special about this pan and like I said it's not that valuable now is it possible that a Maker's Mark May show up back here possible but I don't see enough build up to where we're blocking out any Maker's Marks that does happen sometimes and that's a lot of fun when it does I don't think it's going to happen on this one not to ruin the video for you but yeah we're going to show you I'm going to show you I'll take you through the process of restoring this particular pan now put that away for a second while I'm out here in the garage well the gold standard for restoring these cast iron skillets pans whatever is an electrolysis tank there's different ways you can do this as far as restoring them you can put them in a self-cleaning oven you can put them in oven cleaner and then wrap them in a trash bag there's different ways all over the Internet you can do this the electrolysis tank is the gold standard as far as most collectors are concerned if you've gotten a piece that has been restored through the electrolysis tank that's about as good as you're going to get so about a month ago I decided it's time I used to do the old self-cleaning oven but uh I thought it was time to make an electrolysis tank I'm going to grab you off the tripod right quick and we're gonna go over how to make one of these for yourself okay let's talk about what's going on in here and if you're intimidated by electricals this may seem like a lot but really it's not okay so the basic build of the electrolysis tank you need a sacrificial anode basically for me I'm using plate steel I bought from Home Depot you can get that over in the welding area in Home Depot I'm using two sides so you'll see I've got a piece here and then I've got a piece over here the reason I do that is because when the charge is coming from both sides obviously it's going to get you done that much quicker so if I just had this side it would work but generally the the pan on this side is going to get clean and then I'll have to come out and flip it over and it has clean the other side so it kind of cuts down my time a little bit all right you'll notice these alligator clamps are just simply connecting this plate to that plate that's all that is this is just probably using too much wire like I said I'm not an electrician this is connecting from the battery charger we'll talk about that in just a second and this the negative is what I will put on the pan so I'm going to show you all this in just a second in action you're going to want to make sure that the pan is not touching either anode and basically this is going to seem like uh the electrical charge is going to pass through the pan and um and clean the pan from the inside out now here's a big trick with this this is going to be the tough part for some of you you're going to have to find there's two ways of doing this you're going to have to find an old type battery charger I ended up finding this one for 15 bucks at a local pawn shop the new battery chargers have they're they call themselves smart Chargers they're going to look at this as a charged battery and they are not going to work unless you hook them to a dead battery and then do all of this so there's YouTube things on how to do that I just went and found an old battery charger many of you probably have one sitting around or maybe have a Granddad a dad or an uncle or you know Grandma or something's got one sitting around that's going to be your crutch if you these are hard to find now um so if you can find one this is going to be easy now another crucial element about the tank you'll notice that this looks like basically looks like coffee at this point I've cleaned several pans in here it basically it pretty much never goes bad but it's not just water so we had to make that into an electrolyte and the way we do that is with washing soda so not baking soda this is washing soda my understanding and is this is sodium carbonate not sodium bicarbonate that would be baking soda so you can find that at Walmart pretty much anywhere that has laundry detergent will will have a little rack of uh washing powders so two-thirds cup per five gallons that's a rough measurement doesn't have to be exact but two-thirds cup per five gallons that's going to get you all set up with your electrolysis tank now let's get our pan dipped in there and what I call roasting okay this is actually very very simple I'm going to take the pan here and most pans are going to have a handle you can hang them so we're going to just take a zip tie we're going to zip it on the first couple of clicks better leave us room for adjustment if we need it some people like to brush this off a little bit it's not going to matter the pan is going to clean itself from the metal out so um you'll have more stuff in the residue in there like I said it really doesn't matter you can do that if you want I I use a stick you can piece a piece of PVC um anything that does not conduct electricity of course and we're simply going to dip it here cool some of that rust coming off flex mode and uh we're going to scoot it over a little bit because like I said we don't want it touching the uh now you'll notice now if you can see there it's all the way in the water right well I don't want this negative touching the water I want it touching the metal so I'm going to pipe it up you know the water a little bit and that should set me up fairly well yeah you can see that now all we do is we're going to set this negative right there plank it on and then I'm going to plug it up and I'm going to show you how you know it's working all right you can see my little indicator here on the uh on the battery charger so I'm gonna plug this in and if it shoots up to here we know we're working see what we get all right we're roasting and you'll notice you look closely in here you're going to start to see little bubbles let's see if I can zoom in there we go there you go you can see them popping up that lets you know this thing is cleaning now this particular battery charger and I assume a lot of them they will cycle on and off so you'll hear them clicking on clicking off all that's normal but when we come back this is going to sit for about 24 hours when we come back this entire tub will be full of foam now another important thing is you'll notice I'm right next to a window I've actually got this window open a little bit in our garage for some fresh air that foam is producing hydrogen so as long as you've got it a little bit of air moving you should be able to do this in your garage if not make sure it's on a back porch something like that you obviously for very obvious reasons you don't want hydrogen building up but we're going to sit and let this roast overnight now let's talk about what to look for when you're out shopping for cast iron okay we've got a couple of samples here in front of you this one has been restored quite some time ago this one is in the middle of being restoring restored this hasn't been seasoned yet this one's extremely old we'll talk about this here in just a little bit and this one has just came out of the pile that I bought as a lot it's nice and Rusty it's got some age on it so I've been sitting outside a little bit so what do you look for when you're out shopping for cast iron let's say you want to get into this hobby or you at least want to pick up a few fun pieces uh the first thing you're going to look for is a Maker's Mark um so if you if you're interested in collectible stuff you're going to look for a Maker's Mark so for example this one doesn't really have any Maker's Mark it's just got a number 8 10 and a half inch or 10 and 5 8 inch a lot of times you'll have maybe a Griswold here or a Wagner Wear you'll have some notches three notches indicated an old Lodge pan but anyway you can research all of that online and if you're looking for Collectibles that's probably the way to go now if you're just looking for some items to use at the at the campsite you don't necessarily need the collectible type right so I'm going to show you how to tell if you're getting a good pan so a good example uh the first thing you'll want to look at for that is a smooth cooking surface and even though this is Rusted when you feel it you can tell once the rust is gone once the electrolysis does its job this is going to be a pretty darn good cooking surface here so this would be a pan if you're looking for something to just use this is actually an old Lodge you can see these three notches see that small notch in the heat ring this is an old Lodge pan so um so this has a pretty good surface this would be one you could definitely restore and be worth cooking on at the campsite so as far as the cooking surface is concerned now another thing you want to look for that's important about usability is is it warped Believe It or Not these pans can get too hot and a lot of times they'll warp so I'll give you a good example this one over here this is like a family heirloom for us so we don't really care whether it doesn't work but foreign you can see if you're especially on a flat stove that's going to be quite annoying this one I'm doing the same motion and it's flat as a pancake the old Lodge it's got a little bit of movement but I would be happy with that okay so this would be something I would be so I would definitely be interested in if I found this at a flea market or something for five or five or ten bucks it would definitely be worth picking up and restoring especially since it's an old Lodge it'll actually have a little bit of value to it nobody's going to retire off selling this pan but um it'd be fun to have now the thing about having a smooth surface what can happen in this pan here is very very old this pan was built to cook over coals we know that because it's got feet on it right and you can see it's been used so much pretty much has a hole in it and you can see the pitting as well is just really severe unfortunately for this pan uh the usability is about done you could try to restore it maybe you could get a grinder out I'm not sure you've got a little bump right there where it got too hot um but the best thing the best use for this pan is possibly use the electrolysis tank see if you can get some rust off of it and then paint it with a rust blocking black paint and that's just going to make for a nice decoration that's pretty much what this has come to at this point this this is probably you could tell this is an old cast break there was a cast break right here that's what got too hot this pan is probably from the 1880s I'm not a complete expert on these things somebody May correct me in the comment section but this is an old old pan and it has served its owners very well but its lifespan as far as a cooking utensil is pretty much up now you can make a planter out of them you could like I said you can use a decoration whatever else but as far as actually using them I wouldn't plan on using something like this you'll find a lot of even newer cast iron pieces will be pitted like that so if it's really really pitted it's probably just set it out the pasture but these cooking surfaces are actually really good even though that one's pretty warped so probably wouldn't choose that one anyway that's what's to look for you can go and look up articles on Wagner and Griswold and lodge and miscellaneous markings all there's ad nauseum that type of information online we're not going to go into all that Griswold and Wagner Ware are pretty much the king of collectible pans and maybe I'll show you a couple of those at the end of the video but if you just want one to use that's what to look for okay friends let's get this bench about 24 hours almost exactly 24 hours actually let's get this out of the tank I think it's important for you guys to see me pulling it out of the tank because you're going to notice that it doesn't look like uh bare iron yet you'll see that here in just a second I'm gonna let it get this one last little cycle there we go so I'm gonna take the negative off put it right here actually I should have unplugged my battery charger first so unplug a battery charger first and then make sure your negative is over here and you'll see I'm gonna pull it out and it still looks Rusty right can you see that a little bit so basically what the uh what this has done is made by cleaning 10 times easier 10 times the minimum so you'll notice all the bubbles here on top but I just wanted to make sure you see that it still looks Rusty that's where the next step comes in okay friends brought it inside to the sink and I'm going to spray a little bit of Bar Keepers Friend on them so that's what I like to use and this step and you'll notice I haven't cut the twist the uh pull tie off yet because I don't know if I'm going to have any stubborn Parts I may need to go back in the electrolysis tank so we're going to see what we get here I like to use these particular brushes because it's got this side here to get the little nooks and crannies I found that to be extremely useful [Music] I'm just getting the big stuff off right now I think I think we're gonna be in pretty good shape when I rinse this you'll be able to see [Music] all right let's see what we got [Music] oh yeah this is looking good [Music] so we're getting there still got some stubborn stuff here I'm gonna let it I'm gonna dip it another eight hours or so in the electrolysis tank um you know don't be in a hurry with them you only got to do this once and then if you take good care of them [Music] shouldn't never need to do it again the reason that these need to be done this time is you know back in the day they just cooked wiped it clean and put it up they didn't uh they didn't take care of them as they should have they had too much other work to do so but you can see we're getting we're getting there this is going to be a nice piece it's nice and sharp Lines no pitting it's gonna be a cool little piece now you'll notice this part doesn't get into the electrolysis tank almost always you don't ever have carbon build up here because it's away from the fire right so we'll just hit that with some steel wool I'm actually going to hit this with a little steel wool to see if we can take anything else out and then if not we'll put it back into electrons foreign [Music] the back it's pretty much done [Music] um a little bit more I can do in these little nooks and crannies in here but yeah this is uh the back's looking really good the back would not need another soak in the electrolysis tub I'd be happy with this get a little bit of steel wool work to do but not a whole lot and this is this pan is going to be a good bit more difficult this one I'm doing today than a normal Skillet obviously you just got a smooth surface on this side and a smooth surface on that side you're good to go but you can tell this one's a little more difficult I figured we might as well do this one for the video because it doesn't get too much harder than this one now I did a cornbread pan see if I can show you that one those nooks and crannies were fun but it came out nice I'll get this one uh a little more no time on the steel wool and back in the electrolysis tank all right guys so I ended up leaving it overnight yesterday got away from me and so it's been in there another 24 hours pretty much which is fine it's kind of the good thing about the electrolysis you uh you just let it roll but I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna scrub this and scrub it down pretty good and we'll be ready to get going I'm going to go ahead and pre preheat my oven to 200 degrees so that's really important so go ahead in this point when you know you're about done scrubbing go ahead and preheat your oven okay at this point guys I want to tell you it's important to me this is just how I do things to use some type of lint-free paper towels these are just shop towels you can find at Home Depot or our Walmart or anything like that and so I start using these at this point I just don't want any lint left over so we're pretty much done I did about another five or six minutes of scrubbing on this thing and this one is a little more stubborn than some okay you can see some pitting in there that's going to be all right well we will be fine there we'd rather not have that but like I said this came in a big lot so I just wasn't real picky on what I got with it um but this is about as good as we're gonna get now what I'm going to do I've got my oven preheated to 200 like I mentioned I'm going to dry this off as best I can and then I'm going to put it in that oven Let It Bake for a second probably about 10 minutes at uh at 200 degrees that's really going to make sure everything is bone dry it's also going to prep the metal for the first coat of oil so we'll get it dry we'll get it in the oven get it dry then get it out and start coating the oil now I'm gonna go put this in the oven at this point it doesn't matter if you put it face up or face down but after the next step it certainly will okay I can't stress the importance enough of getting this thing dried and put it in the oven immediately this thing if you look at it wrong it's going to rust okay so we're going to go and put in a suit you'll see I have some other pieces in here uh it stinks up the house when you do this a little bit so I try to do it several pieces at once so we do it less often but I'm just going to put it face up right now like I said it doesn't matter the next step it will we're gonna let these sit for about 10 minutes let the metal heat up good okay while the cast iron is heating up let's talk about what we've got ready to go to uh to season okay so I just use an old paintbrush you can buy a new one if you're fancy this one's going to work just fine I've got a little bit of what I'm using today is grapeseed oil that seems to be the most recommended but I'm gonna be real honest with you uh Crisco was good enough for Grandmama so Crisco works fine for me too so I've used Crisco before especially on some of my pans have been passed down just because that's what they used on them but I think the gold standard for the most Parts grapeseed oil I got a little bit of grapeseed oil in here to use the paintbrush especially with this particular pan that we're doing today it's got some nooks and crannies in it it's just easier to use a brush I've got some lint-free paper towel here which like I said the shop towels I fold it up like this to apply and then this is probably the most important towel I use this is to take off the excess oil that is easily the biggest mistake most people use when they're trying to season these things is using way too much oil it doesn't take much as a matter of fact once you put it on once you put it on the pan you literally try to get as much off as you can whatever soaked in has already soaked in get the rest off if you don't it's going to have weird patterns it's going to get sticky and we don't want any of that so we're ready to rock here a few more minutes in the oven for the iron and then we'll get it out and I'll show you how I put the first coat of Olam okay let's pop her out of the oven and there's no exact science here just enough time for this thing to get warm and I'm gonna start with the paintbrush and then we'll just start coating this thing with some oil and you'll see why I need to get the oil in these nooks and crannies see that so it's not uh using a paper towel on this with this one this particular pan would be a little tougher usually you can just take one of these shop rags and wipe down like a normal cast iron skillet you can just wipe it down I got some way too much oil over here come back over here and bring it but you want to make sure that you get oil in every single nook and cranny because if you don't it will 100 rust on you gear on as oh Justin Wilson used to say guarantee all right Mom all right don't forget about the handle oh see hmm got this little crack in this one so that's what happens sometimes you can kind of see a crack in this pan there's one room here this is why you can see again all these nooks and crannies is exactly why I use a brush because these would be a huge pain to get with a paper towel don't forget the outside of the pan more I mean this is no more than I wouldn't say not even a teaspoon of oil as you can see nowhere looking pretty now starting to look pretty uh now like I said this is easily the most important part and by the way I love these these blue fire gloves oven gloves they work great I'll I'll link them in the description box so I can I can remember now you're literally gone this is the most important part of the whole process guys you're gonna go in and try to get as much oil off of this pan as you can I know that seems counterintuitive because you think that the oil is protecting it and you're right but all the oil it's ever going to absorb at this temp anyway it's already absorbed so you're not going to bother the process here you're actually going to make it make this into a better seasoning just be careful because even at 200 degrees this this thing is hot what you think about it back back good yeah we got a very significant crack here so Becky please don't move the camera buddy thank you oh I don't know if you can see it or not but there's a big crack right along here so that's not good that would be uh you know something that probably didn't show up because of the carbon buildup but it is certainly there now doesn't change anything that just would be less likely to use this one cooking a whole bunch and you'll notice I'm spending a good bit of time on this because like I said this is the easily the most important part and this is the part that most people mess up so they think if they cake it on it's going to uh be a better seasoning and it only ends up being sticky and weird patterns show up because of the oil cooked and pulled and yeah it just ends up not working out for them too well so if you see a whole pan at the antique shop that's real sticky no offense but they didn't know what they were doing when they were seasoning it all right I'm gonna get this finished up and even though it's got a crack in it still a cool pan so we'll we'll still obviously go through the whole process but I got most of the Shine off of it all right now we're gonna bump it up to 300 degrees and do all of that again this time you're going to place it in the in the oven face down very important okay we've had the pan at 300 for about 10 15 minutes maybe and you can see our first seasoning is looking pretty but we're not there yet so Metal's a little hotter now we're going to go in put another thin coat of oil on this yeah we're going to do the same exact process we did at 200 degrees except this one we're doing it at 300 degrees again coating the oil and then wiping off as much as we can so I'm just going to do a real quick coating on here be sure to catch everything and we've got two kids so hold on a second okay crisis averted now we have to go in again like I said and wipe off as much as we can so the most important step now at this point this pan is very hot any little slip you're going to burn the tip of your finger so just a heads up on that and again I like that I'm doing this pan because this pan is certainly a little more challenging than most of them because a lot of times you got the smooth surface on the inside you just wipe it and wipe it off and but it's important that you get into these little nooks and crannies so this one's taking a little bit longer but we'll also have a more unique pan so I'm going to finish wiping off the oil in this one now the next step we are going to take this we're going to pop it back in the oven at 450 this time and that's going to sit for two hours that's going to be that's going to be the final just baking that oil in it's going to come out nice and uh what I call crispy but it'll be like a a dark golden brown that's going to be your seasoning that'll be the next thing that you see will be after this step 450 for two hours let it cool on its own turn the oven off and let it cool down on its own and then I'll show you the finished product here it comes stay tuned okay friends here we are our finished product and still a little warm I just got it out but there we are see that in there now you can certainly see see that crack yep you can see the crack there that we mentioned earlier that would not be there if it weren't that little piece of oil wouldn't be there for it for that crack but that's it so you can see it baked itself on and it's looking good happy with this I wish it hadn't cracked or had didn't have the crack already uh if I cracked it this the first one I've cracked in 15 years so I think it actually the crack came about with uh once we got all of the old carbon out but that's it guys let me show you a couple more of the pieces I've done all right one of my favorites and now keep in mind all of this cast iron came out of the same lot I bought a there's a picture I'll show you a picture right quick there you go right there and this all came out of the same lot one of my favorites in the group was this waffle iron so you can imagine that this was quite the experience to get on all those nooks and crannies but basically you pour your batter in cook it over that side and then pop it up flip it to the other side it's got this nice little base and it comes separate and yeah that was all complete so I was great very happy to have that one this one doesn't have a maker's mark on it there's an F there there's an eight there if you know what that is I'd love to hear but uh but I'm not sure on the maker of that one I'm just glad to have it now here's another interesting piece this is a deep fat fryer here let me see can you see it there it is and now the only thing that I got this from eBay this is one of the original baskets that went in it right so you you fill that up with oil and Fry and bring it out but this one is actually a Griswold oh upside down this one's a Griswold and these are sought after this one's probably worth I don't know 80 or 100 bucks I got to get a a hay wire hay bale wire handle for it so it didn't have that but that's what goes in these two spots here all right so moving along like I said all this came out of that same lot now this one this one's a Wagner Wear you can see that there you go see Wagner Wear Sydney this is a fat free fryer and they say that because it's shallow not sure how fat free you are but you can see that the surface is nice and smooth Wagner's known for their you can see the circles in their uh finish of their cooking surface you can see that there so I was grateful to get that one and then just one more from that from that group this is another Griswold see there there you go and this one's got a really great cooking surface so no wobble and smooth as silk down here um not sure what that is that's probably extra oil that I didn't get off there you go you can kind of see it there with the light but you can see these old pans are still I mean these things are rocking and rolling so it's hard to beat them well guys I hope you enjoyed this this is just one of my hobbies that I uh do from time to time I was lucky to find that lot of stuff and uh if this was useful which I hope it was go out and get you a couple of pans no matter how Rusty they are just make sure you follow the instructions uh talked what we talked about earlier and see if you can do this it's really not that big a deal it's not that hard to do so I hope you enjoyed uh share the video it always helps the channel and consider subscribing see ya

Channel: Wandering Weekends

Views: 768,333

Keywords: camping, travel trailer, Grand Design, Ford, towing, boating, Georgia, Georgia State Parks, rv, rv'ing, full time, southeast, jayco, open range, rockwood, flagstaff, salem, wildwood, coleman, aspen trail, crossroads, fuel, reflection, solitude, momentum, transcend, restoration, wagner ware, griswold, old cast iron, skillet, lodge, pans, vintage cast iron, electrolysis, best way, waffle iron, camp cooking, camp cookware, how to

Id: BcazpVA4ub4

Length: 35min 12sec (2112 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020