Strata 12.5” rust blue timelapse and first seasoning
Really liked how this turned out.
Roughly followed but tweaked Noah Bristol’s youtube guide on rust bluing cast iron.
Surface prepped with a light sanding and green scotchbrite, but I probably should have done more, like a vinegar etch. The first few layers mostly flaked off and left a lot of bare metal, maybe because the surface was too smooth or I wasn’t aggressive enough with degreasing the factory oil.
Also found that I got a lot better results wiping rust solution on a warmed pan so that it would flash off, instead of drenching like Noah suggested. I did several passes before the conversion step.
First tried boiling water in the pan, but steaming over a wok seemed better and faster.
Once I figured it out, it only took me 3 cycles to get a decent covering of black oxide. Could have gone more but I figured it was all aesthetics after that point.
The first seasoning layer was super even. Seems like it really does act like velcro. On my Dartos, the first layers always had little drops of coalesced oil no matter how many dry paper towel wipes I did.
Stopped at 3 layers of seasoning because it was late.
Will post a timelapse of the rust conversion in the comments, it’s pretty cool to watch the black rust spread.