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.

Is this hobby you want to start actually something you find fun or something you think you’d enjoy if you were the person you think you are?

My tricks to get going; Talk to people about it, this gives me external accountability. It then becomes ”I said I was gonna do it” and I don’t want to be someone who just talks shit. Or the person joins the activity and that makes it much harder to skip.

Think about the end goal or find a critical point. If i want to be a hobby farmer, i need to do the boring part of soil prep. Otherwise summer comes and Ill again be a shit talker. If i don’t sow these seeds now, theres nothing to farm later.

Prepare a work station and leave stuff out; In place and in the way. I make little specialised toolboxes or work stations. Its about lowering the barrier to getting started.

Simplify your ideas. You don’t need to see A-Z. Just reaching B can change circumstances and create inspiration. I employ ”donkey mode” by briefly considering the consequence of doing a bad job, how poorly others have done it but still succeeding, and repeat the mantra donkey mode donkey mode. I can deal with the consequence of my poor labour after the fact. Someone already made it worse than I did.

If things feel insurmountable; just focus on a small thing. I have many projects running in parallel and taking just a single step forward is great. When all the pieces are in place: execute. Dig that damn garden, don’t worry what gets planted.

And don’t be afraid to cut projects loose or shelve them. Having an infinite todo list where hobbies usually get knocked down, prevents the brain from feeling ”done and settled”, which keeps me from getting into something fun.

Cheers and good luck ✌️

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!

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.

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.

New pics just dropped!

Just added new pictures!

Not yet! Its been growing like crazy

I’ll maintain that soap from the trash is much much cheaper than buying soap and a soap dish tho. Frugality is making things reach further with small means no?

I would be delightfully surprised if asparagus showed up but its doubtful since this was just gravel and shrubbery two years ago. It started to open its top leafs so will take new photos tomorrow. Hopefully this mystery can be solved soon.

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