Back to Life.

Last fall I rode my bicycle to my late grandparent's home.  I hadn't been there in years, and sadly, no one else had been either.  Unfortunately, the house was essentially abandoned after my grandma passed.  Dilapidated.  Run-down.  Overgrown.  Sad.

Doors locked, I was stuck outside.  I would later find that even with a key, the front door would require a considerable amount of effort to open.  The seasons had taken their toll, and the consistent expanding and contracting essentially warped the door into becoming one with the wall.

Making my way behind the house, everything was so small.  Playing around as a kid - picking chestnuts, climbing trees, throwing apples at my brothers, and burning an endless amount of childhood energy, all the while seeing my grandfather sitting on the patio from so far away - it was simply vast and unexplorable.  Now, nothing.

In the distance was a semi-collapsed chicken coop.  Built on a small hillside, it sat in the shade of the forest behind it.  It was faded blue, and nature wanted it.  I've only known it to be a shelter for miscellaneous accumulations, and I wanted to see what it still held.

The steps leading to the door were long-ago rotted away and what wood remained was halfway buried in the grassy dirt.  Climbing past that mess brought me inside, where I encountered a tetanus-inducing jungle.  Brackets, wire fencing, nails - anything and everything farm and garden related - all rusted out and weathered.  Tools once used for hours a day, now lifeless.

Treading lightly around the inside, I managed to find two Schwinn's along the back wall.  Surprisingly, both were in pretty decent condition.  The tires were dry-rotted somewhat, and there was some surface rust here and there, but compared to everything else in the vicinity they weren't too shabby.

My Aunt Patty's sweet ride.

I wanted the bicycles, but there was no way I was going to be able to get them home.  Instead, my eyes locked onto another forgotten treasure.

Rusted, pitted and full of potential.

I exited the chicken coop as carefully as I entered, and was very much excited to have a memento of the long trip down.  This would be the second cast-iron skillet that I've rescued by bike - The first being a 9" Griswold in Rockwood, PA.  I know.  Weird.

Halfway home.

I finally got around to restoring this little guy a couple weeks ago.  I used a drill and wire wheel to remove the years of heavy oxidation.  The deeper pits would have to remain, but ten minutes of work went a long way.

The next step was tossing it in the oven and turning the self-cleaning cycle on for five hours.  Anything left on it would be reduced to ash.  My other cast-iron needed some love, so it got thrown in the natural gas-fueled inferno as well.

Bare.

Big brother got naked, too.

Once cooled, they were both coated with oil and put back in the oven.  Two hours at 250 degrees seems to be just enough heat to open the pores in the metal to soak it all in.  Another hour at 375 to finish it up.

Edit!  Because one person asked, and that seems to be enough demand to warrant more info...

I used flaxseed oil to season these, and pretty much followed all the steps from this cast iron genius, here:  http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/

The only difference between her process and what I did was the temperature and duration of seasoning.  Once the oil is soaked into the skillet, the goal is to pretty much get it up past it's smoke point.  The smoke point for flaxseed oil is pretty low at around 225 degrees.  Leaving the oven temperature at 250 for a couple hours gets it close.  The metal temperature is still about 200 degrees at this point.  Turning it up to 375 for an hour gets it where it needs to be.  I did this five times.  So, time consuming, but worth it.