Can you black oxide cast iron

My 30 year old son is now using it. Some Thoughts: Using a fat that is solid at room temperature seems to make more sense to me…Crisco, lard, coconut oil. After the pan gets a really nice black, slick surface you can use some Joy to clean it without any removal of the finish.

The only use that seemed to be hard on the finish was cooking a tomato based sauce for long periods. I just bought a 15gallon or so cast iron kettle with the intentions of making some burgoo. The kettle is not rusty at all, really has a pretty slick black finish on the inside.

If you rub the outside you get a black substance that seems more like carbon than oily. The guy I bought it from said to build a fire in it under it and around it to kill it as he put it, then rub it down with grease before cooking with it.

Does anyone have a good recommendation for how to treat a kettle, its obviously not going to fit in my oven. We received 3 stripped down old cast iron skillets for Christmas. We followed the your instructions and they were looking good.

Did we use the wrong type oil organic cold pressed, pure and unfiltered Flax oil? We tried very hard not to use too much oil and never got any drips. I have not conducted a search of scientific literature or Lexus-Nexis on this subject. It would seem the onions could form sulfuric acid and perhaps produce some iron salts during this process? Then perhaps wipe it dry of the oil and season in the oven at high temperature F for an hour as Sheryl has suggested?

Would enough salts be created to make a difference? Frankly studying this stuff could lead to some factory applied seasoning that outperforms anything known.

The only reason I can think of for attributing non-stick qualities to the presence of carbon is the idea that graphite one of the forms of carbon is extremely slippery, so much so that it is used as a dry lubricant.

However, char, which is the only form of carbon that would show up from the seasoning process, is not graphite, so I think this is a mis-attribution. In any case, even if char were non-stick not so from my experience! Graphite certainly wears away, unless you have specially prepared graphite solids.

If there were enough char or graphite to contribute significantly to the non-stick qualities of seasoning, wiping the well seasoned surface seasoned by your flax seed oil method with a paper towel should show lots of black stuff coming off. Bought it for 10 dollars, and decided to try and do a proper and thorough seasoning from the ground iron up. Honestly, I feel like the lye had somewhat of a degreaser effect, and it came off as a slick film, so I could feel the DRY iron underneath, especially in tandem with scrubbing with a wire brush.

The iron was very raw as far as I could tell, so I rinsed very well and dried thoroughly, and then put it into the oven for an hour on or so. I have a very large stainless steel pot that I had filled with water and boiled. I initially tried to put the skillet into the water, but because of an intense sizzle when touching the water slightly, decided that the temp difference was too much. After 30min, I took the skillet out, put it back in the oven to dry, and put the dutch oven bottom in.

After 30 min, took it out, put the top of the dutch oven in. BUT, I did notice something that I wanted to share. I think all the Iron came out darker less red, darker grayish after I put it in the boiling water for 30min.

I have no idea what this is, but I think it has something to do with this black rust procedure. Neither the new-ish Logic which went in first nor the top of the dutch oven which went in last, by itself had visible residue.

I was in a rush to get to an important obligation SLIGHTLY more important than perfect cast iron; babysitting my neice , so I rushed… and just slathered some oil on it afterward so I could leave and not worry about rust developing. I wish I could edit my comment after leaving it… n e ways, here is the first pic with bad link…. Hi sheryl and all, just bought a new 20 inch cast iron roaster. Hi everyone.

I stripped our old skillet down to bare metal using power tools because there were some grooves scored around the perimeter of the cooking surface that I wanted to smooth out.

I washed it thoroughly in soap and water to be sure there was no residue left from the sanding, dried it thoroughly with a towel and then stuck it in a preheating deg oven.

An hour later it came out with reddish, not black, rust. I understand that moisture is an issue, but heating the pan IS the way to dry it out, so I figure it should have dried out quickly, then turned black. I wiped as much of the rust off as I could with paper towels, but the color never completely went away. Then, following an inexplicable logic, I rubbed some flax oil into it while it was still hot, hoping that might change the color. Now it looks really rather beautiful and shiny, but definitely reddish.

Or more accurately, how can you dry it out without creating red rust, so you can get to the part where you make black rust. The first piece I stripped was rusted. I documented the whole thing in a blog post here with pictures :. This post was written before I did the research into flax oil, but it describes how I got rid of the rust.

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I have that on another blog but forgot to put one here. The hot black oxide is truly a better, more durable, higher-performing coating. The one area where I would preferentially use room temperature black would be on castings, forgings, and powdered metal.

The difference between the two products when it is all said and done is the Black Magic Infusion has a little bit higher surface tension so that when you use that product, you tend to drag out more solutions with the parts as they exit the black bath into the rinse. So black magic infusion helps to alleviate that problem. There was a situation where I was blackening a gator clip, and I came out of the hot black oxide water, rinsed it, and as I came out of the rinse, the parts actually fractured and broke because of the hydrogen buildup in it.

Generally speaking, the harder the alloy — say if it is a spring made out of piano wire, for instance, or those gator clip type parts — could be very prone to hydrogen embrittlement.

But the way to deal with it is a post bake oven. Use the hot black oxide rather than room temperature, and you do require a topcoat. The products that we have that might get you to 96 hours is a product called the Metal Guard , and then another product called Metal Guard will definitely get you over hours on most black oxidized parts done in the hot black oxide, not the room temperature.

Once the part has been properly cleaned, it is dipped into an alkaline oxidizing bath at an elevated temperature. The elevated temperature is the catalyst needed for the chemical reaction to occur. Black oxide penetrates the metal and creates a coating 10 millionths of an inch above and below the surface. No hydrogen embrittlement occurs during this step because the parts are not exposed to an acid activator. The final step in the black oxide process is applying a supplementary coating to the part.

Black oxide coatings by themselves are easily corroded, resulting in flash rusting. This final finish is necessary to provide corrosion protection to the part. The type of final finish applied determines the type of color the part will receive. An oil-based finish is applied when no specific finish is requested, and provides a glossy color. A wax or lacquer finish will create a matte color.