u/TrafficImportant4204

I should have come here first, because I did vinegar before lye, and this old pan needed that done in the other order.

But, when I got it down to bare metal, there was some pretty bad pitting in a few places. But I oven seasoned it anyway.

The first pass I didn’t get a thin enough film, and there were some drips evident, but it felt smooth, so I kept going for a few more cycles in the oven and then just started to cook with it.

Tonight, seared and rendered some bone-in chicken thighs, then chucked them in a 475 oven to finish, and they came out great. Pan cooks like a dream and wiped clean. Still some rough surfaces around the pitting, be that’ll fill in, or it won’t.

Don’t much care; this is a tool, and a damn good one. Glad I have it. On a limited dataset, it performs better than my made-in carbon steel.

Never got a picture before I started, but my first post is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/carbonsteel/s/lIXLwnM267

This is after two rounds of bagged, easy off soaking (3 days for the first, and 2 for the second). 99% of the carbon gunk has been removed and it’s feeling mostly smooth.

Right now this has been rinsed with a 50-50 vinegar solution, washed with dawn, dried well with a towel and then an oven burner and lightly oiled all over.

The pan surface still has some areas of raised black stuff that no amount of elbow grease, vinegar, baking soda paste, bartenders friend, dawn soap, SOS pads, or fine grit sandpaper will budge. And the handle obviously still needs some love.

Are the spots on the pan surface pitting? If so is the solution just to season the thing and use it? For the handle, would treating it with naval jelly, cleaning it well, seasoning it in the stove with the pan and then slapping a silicone holder on it be the most sensible course of action at this point?

Open to ideas!

It is coming.

My partner and I made a deep cuts playlist using a bunch of the recommendations from this thread a while back — huge thanks to everyone who chimed in. Ended up with 25 tracks and digging into it was a lot of fun.

Figured I'd share it back here since y'all helped to build it. It's on Spotify here — we've also got it featured on a small site (vinylisvoodoo.com) ViV is mostly for fun/editorial, but we do sell some merch, so not linking directly to the page, just being as transparent as possible.

Thanks again to all who gave us direction and places to launch our exploration into the deeper waters.

Found this buried in an old barn. What was not the carbonized layers of black gunk on the outside/inside was covered in rust.

Did a 30 minute vinegar/water soak followed by scrubbing with steel wool, and got to this. Washed and dried thoroughly and lightly oiled for now, but is it worth it to try another soak on this, or another method?

When I was drying it over a burner, it got HOT quick, so might be a useful searing pan…