Rusty Cast Iron Skillet Restoration

hey everyone this is Steven Strong at cast iron cookware where you can find information to help you better collect restore and use cast iron cookware today I'm going to be restoring this little rusty number four skillet Wagner Sydney oh 1054b and we're going to be doing that coming right up [Music] before we get started I just want to say thank you to everyone that's purchased my product easy peasy cast iron seasoning the purchase of this product helps get this channel going and I just want to say thank you so very much so let's get on into our video like I said in the opening we're going to take this little rusty Skillet and it's a number four Wagner sidney-o and you can see it is covered in Rust I think somebody may have started the restoration process maybe even put it in a live bath and never did anything about the rust now when it comes to restoring cast iron there's three particular ways that most restoration people like to follow one is the one that everybody loves that is using an electrolysis tank now everybody doesn't have one but I will say this electrolysis will remove all of the Organics and the rust and pretty much anything else now when it comes to rust by itself a lot of people use a vinegar scrub and when it comes to removing old seasoning if you don't have access to electrolysis you can use a live bath another variation of the lye bath is the easy off oven spray method that works as well today we're going to be using the vinegar water scrub and we're going to change the camera angle and we'll get started now I will say this you can soak in vinegar but I have this solution is 50 water 50 percent vinegar and I'm using white vinegar at five percent acidity now if you use two strong a vinegar solution you may damage your cast iron so I have white vinegar at five percent acidity you know five to ten percent is going to be fine uh 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 down with 50 water now you can go ahead and soak it but I find used a lot less vinegar with this particular method especially if you have a place that you can do it now I have the stainless steel sink here in my studio now which is really really handy and I'm just going to give it a spray down and I'm going to scrub it just a little to try to remove the outer thickest part the part that's going to come off the easiest give it a rinse and then spray it down again and let it set for no longer than 30 minutes because if you already have pitting in your surface that vinegar will go right after it and those pits will get larger and larger so give us a little bit of a rinse and actually we're looking pretty good but they're still a good bit of rust we'll get in all them little nooks and crannies as we go I've got a nice little line right here looks like it was left in water or maybe a live bath get that line just a little bit so looking much better already there's still a little bit of rust here and there so I'm gonna go ahead and spray her down it's really liberally foreign [Music] now if you come back before the 30 minutes is over and it starts drying go ahead and give it another squirt or two just to keep it moist that's the key keeping it moist so we're going to start our clock we're going to come back in 30 minutes probably come back a couple times between now and then just to make sure it's not dried to give it another squirt okay it's been 30 minutes I did come back in here about halfway through and give it another spray [Applause] let's take a look here now this is just a plastic type scrubby it's not abrasive at all not metallic of course you can use an SOS pad or what commonly called a Brillo pad or fine steel wool infused with soap once I get the initial rust removed I'll probably go to a soap pad like that okay let's give us a little bit of rinse foreign water to get up to my faucet [Applause] now I'm going to break out the big guns this is a great value soap pad it's the same as what people would call a Brillo pad it's a soap infused fine steel wool it's not going to hurt the surface whatsoever so we're going to give it a good scrubbing with this [Laughter] [Music] foreign I would use this leave it on my most expensive pieces without worry there's some who would not but me personally I don't see a problem with it that's the inside now this particular handle on this this piece right here has got a lot of little little crannies you just have to work with them individually okay once we get to the hard parts and then we can put our attention on the outer parts I did notice a ring and it looks like it goes all the way around I believe 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 little bit of a rust ring all the way around it you can't hardly see it you mostly can feel it right there you may be able to see the line and it's a level line so evidently it was underwater kind of caulked sideways causing it to have a water level line there so this has got a outer heat ring so we're going to try to get inside that little little Groove I'm gonna give her a rinse there's quite a bit of staining especially right down through here I don't believe that's seasoning I think it's just staining this thing is uh probably not been treated great in its life [Music] we're going to give it another good good scrub all over especially on the surface of the inside the cooking surface because that's really what matters when it comes to use as far as I can tell there's no pitting at all on this piece mostly just staining probably because it was in a restoration process it got halted halfway through now if all the roofs didn't come off we could go ahead and do another vinegar scrub but the rust is pretty much gone unless we have an issue with flash rust and I've got an answer for that so before I rinse it this next time I'll show you what we do about Flash rust now flash rust is once you get a piece completely all stripped down to bare metal and then you give it a good washing while it's drying when that water evaporates you will wind up with a film over the entire piece of cast iron of rust that's called flash rust what I've found the best thing and I'm going to show that on this video is while your piece is still wet before any evaporation takes place I like to use hot water to rinse the hotter the better the reason why is it makes the pan warm that way the oil will saturate butter so while the pace is still wet take your seasoning oil whether it's whatever oil that you use I personally like to use the easy peasy because it's my product and it does a great job I'll go ahead and apply that easy beasy or seasoning oil on the cast iron while it is wet the oil will displace the water so flash rust doesn't have a chance to even take hold or even think about starting and then once you wipe it down good you're good we're going to get our water as hot as we can get it okay while it is still wet and warm enough to accept a little bit of easy Beezy I'm going to take some of my easy Beezy and I'm going to rub it all over the cast iron before it dries while it is still wet what happens is before flash rust has a chance to take hold during the evaporation process the easy beasy or the oil you can use uh whatever seasoning oil that you prefer I like easy peasy because it's easy peasy so after we get a nice liberal 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 flash rust does not have a chance to get a hold take a paper towel and just go ahead and paper towel dry the piece as much as possible it's one paper towel infused let's get a fresh fresh towel start with a handle and there we go we have a clean somewhat stained piece of cast iron with absolutely no flash rust and I still have the little the little line if you can see it all the way around but it's going to disappear in the seasoning process and you can even see the line on the inside maybe maybe the camera will show it I have the line on the inside and the outside evidently it was inside a lye bath or even water sitting at whatever angle this this line and the water evaporated down to a level which left a water line a lot like the ring around the tub on them really bad working days but uh it's still there and it's still stained but the process of seasoning will cover all that up and this piece will look like brand new once we put a few layers of seasoning on that so let's get started with the seasoning process now we've applied the oil already while it was wet wiped off the excess so we have our first layer of seasoning there already and it's there as a protectant until you put it in the oven I always recommend to go about 30 or 40 degrees above the smoke point of your oil so with my product I usually go anywhere from 480 to 500 Degrees just to get a good seasoning and I'll let that run for about 30 minutes to an hour let it cool down you know don't take the pieces out till you can handle them let it cool down to a couple hundred maybe 250 degrees handle it with oven mitts foreign seasoning wipe off all of 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 kind of look at how well it's going okay our first round is over and it's still a little bit on the warm side and here's what we got it's starting to look pretty good let me pull the camera down and we'll apply our second layer of visibility it's still kind of warm I don't want to set it on my countertop so I'm going to set it on my little lady Bess piece I'll make sure we get a coating on the entire piece my cloth is not infused all the way yet so so this is my application cloth make sure I get a good coating you can apply it as liberally as you need to as far as getting it applied foreign we're just going to make sure that we remove all of the excess once we get it applied apologize for losing the center of the frame okay now I'm going to take my application calls and put it away I'm gonna grab my wipe down cloth and one reason why I like using the sleeves is you can turn these things inside out and get a good dry spot so I'm going to buff away all of the excess inside and out and one thing you have to make sure you you don't have to but you want to make sure that you buff across the lettering because if you don't it'll fill in and you'll lose that nice logo if you have a piece with a nice logo like we do here buff away so we're going to stick this one back in the oven from 30 minutes to an hour at 500 degrees then we'll check out what our second round comparison looks like so okay we got our third round out and it's starting to look a little better so we're going to go ahead and pull the camera down and apply our last layer of seasoning to this piece okay so it's still pretty warm so we're going to take our easy bees and just go around the rim [Music] go ahead and go around the outside take our application cloth and make sure everything is covered now we're going to take our wax off just like the Karate Kid wax on wax off okay we have our easy bees applied for our last layer of seasoning and I also want to say a lot of people ask me when you put your pieces in oven do you go upside down or straight up what is like this if you put too much oil on it do it upside down but we don't want to put too much oil the trick and the main thing the number one ruling season in cast iron is less is best so if you have buffed away all the excess residue it doesn't matter which way you lean it because there's not going to be any running not going to be any splotchy now if you leave too much on there it may be splotchy it doesn't matter which way you lay it if you buff it down like you should you'll have less smoke and you won't have to worry about drippage a lot of people will put their pieces in the oven let them run for about 15 minutes and let them get up you know three or four hundred degrees they'll take them out and wipe them down again it really makes a difference so less is best so we're going to put this in the oven for us last round and do a final comparison okay we finally got it out of the oven and it's cooled down so we can take a good look at it again this is the finished product now we have a little bit of staining still showing through but that will eventually disappear the inside looks great nice and smooth and uh the little ring that was there it still has a little bit of evidence and that will fill in in time especially if I keep using it and I plan to a couple of things that seasoning is for number one is protect the cast iron from rusting and number two make it easier to clean up now it does get a little more non-stick I've done a video in the past where I proved that even a rusty Skillet can be non-stick if you use the right temperature and the right amount of oil but it does help somewhat with non-stick but this one turned out great and it's going to get better as time goes I hope that you've enjoyed the restoration process the rust removal through the vinegar water solution and the scrub and also the seasoning getting it started getting the first few layers getting it ready for use and if you have please don't forget to subscribe hit the notification Bell and I promise I'll keep more coming and I just want to say thank you again for watching cast iron cookware before you go I'd like to share something with you really quickly in First Peter chapter 5 verse 10 and 11 it says but the God of all Grace who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ after that ye have suffered a while make you perfect establish strength and settle you to him be the glory and Dominion forever and ever amen I just want to say share the word and be a blessing [Music] thank you foreign

Channel: Cast Iron Cookware

Views: 370,277

Keywords: cast iron, cast iron skillet, cast iron restoration, cast iron skillet cleaning, cast iron skillet seasoning, cast iron restoration vinegar, restoring cast iron, restoring cast iron skillet, restoring cast iron pans, rusted cast iron, how to restore cast iron, stephen strawn, strawn, rust removel, rust removal with vinegar, cast iron cookware, vintage cast iron, wagner ware cast iron, easy beezy cast iron seasoning, Stained cast iron cookware, lodge, bsr, griswald, blacklock, rusty

Id: BmqegKLNQ5E

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022