A little over a year ago I posted about this Dutch oven that I almost saved from my dad’s estate sale but he swiped it back from me after I cleaned it up (I was cleaning it for the sale, he didn’t know I was thinking about keeping it).
Well, Dad passed away in April and I’ve been low-key looking for this thing for like a month and a half. Last weekend I finally found it. In the barn. Getting rusty. Again. I have to keep it now for two reasons. One, it has too much of a story to give up now and two, if I find out that anyone let this damn thing get rusty again, I’m going to lose my shit!
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If you love something set it free. If it returns, it was meant to be.
I tried that with my wife. I’m still paying all her bills like 15 years later. Got any other advice, friend?
Seek therapy.
That’s a great story, sorry about your dad.
What is your method for cleaning rust off cast iron? I have a pan that could really use some love but inexperience and laziness has prevented me from actually doing anything about it. This post has inspired me to finally work on it
One of those scrubbers of stainless steel lathe floss are great with some elbow grease. If you want perfection, hydrogen peroxide (drain cleaner), a car battery charger and a steel rod (as electrode) will do you great. Just read up on electrolysis and what Not to put in it. My setup is a curled iron rod attached to the positive and the negative clamp right on the piece being cleaned. Suspended in the bucket. 6-12 hours on 6 amps usually does it.
While I’d love to try the electrolysis, I have literally zero of the required material and I’d be afraid that I would electrocute myself. I think I’ll have to stick to the steel wool and elbow grease.
A quick google also suggest a vinegar soak and/or baking soda paste. Can you recommend one or the other?
Its not nearly as dangerous as it sounds. 12 Volt doesn’t have the oumpf to jump through a human. You can use pretty much any electric provider (old laptop charger, power brick even 9 V battery (will be painfully slow and wasteful tho). Pretty sure most alkalines work too not just hydrogen peroxide.
Vinegar works by dissolving the rust and should give you good results too. Wont get it out of tight spots the way electrolysis does tho. Just get it hot/dry and oiled fast to avoid spotrust.
Idk about baking soda, its alkaline too right?
Just try it. Its iron, you wont break it :)
My pans get used and abused, dishsoap and all. The coating regularly get destroyed but a very hot pan and a thin layer of oil, wait until it starts pooling/separate then wipe all sides as dry as possible with cloth. The cloth will get black. Repeat layer of hot oil and wipe until the cloth stays clean. Usually i find that one good layer is enough to keep even eggs from sticking. Heat is key to polymerise the oil.
thanks for the tips, I’ll look into it and probably try something this weekend
As long as you get loose stuff off and coat it, it really doesn’t matter much. It gets better over time. Don’t worry about getting it black like new, thats mostly soot and doesn’t add anything. Mine stay shiny iron forever.
Sometimes I even let it spot rust before the first coat and it gets a cool rusty colour sheen. Similar sheen using unrefined rape seed oil. But really any food oil, even olive oil, works great. Google the smoke point temperature of your oil, or just watch for it to puddle and just barely start smoking.
Good luck!
White vinegar and elbow grease.
Had a bit of time today and did the thing.
With a bit of vinegar it was suprisingly easy to remove the rust and required a lot less elbow grease than I had feared. I unfortunately don’t have a before picture, but it was quite rusty actually.
This is what it looks like after two coats of oil.
First was refined sunflower oil, second was cold pressed linseed oil.
Thanks for the help, much appreciated.
Looking nice!! If you keep cleaning it with one of those steely things those pits will eventually fill up with polymerised oil and get smoother. I used a piece of hardened tool steel and actually scraped the cooking surface almost mirror smooth. Cooks like a dream.
And avoid sour stuff like tomatoes as it does the same as vinegar but I find that a hot pan with oil survives even that, so long as you get it out of the pan as soon as you’re done. Then again, as you’re now know, fixing it is dirt simple.
For light rust, I’ve always just scrubbed with dish soap and an SOS pad or steel wool. For something heavily rusted, you’ll probably want to scrub with a 50/50 water vinegar mix. You can soak it for a short time but not more than 15-20 minutes, the vinegar can start to eat your iron over a longer period.
You can use that cast iron pot in a campfire to melt aluminum cans or auto parts for casting shapes in DRY sand molds. Be really careful though, liquid aluminum is like 1100 or 1200 F and if spilled on your foot would probably burn it right off. Then you’d need a roller skate or something as a replacement, rather inconvenient on stairs.
