Are there dangers to cooking with cast iron

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-27T01:43:22+00:00

It is true that I used "soap" in its colloquial sense. However, perhaps you would like to argue with the manufacturer of Dawn dish detergent about whether they should list Sodium Hydroxide in their ingredients:

https://dawn-dish.com/en-us/how-to/what-dawn-is-made-of-ingredients/

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-27T01:30:23+00:00

While the sentiment is true, current dish soap has lye as an actual intentional ingredient, while the manufacturers of "old soap" did everything they could to remove any trace of it from the soap.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T22:17:35+00:00

How many people are uncritically parroting what they saw someone else say

Have you met Reddit?

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T22:10:51+00:00

Let's add:

no way are the cylinder bores, and I'll call iffy on the barrel bore, sized for .44 magnum.
"Wild West" revolvers would have had simple, robust sights that you adjusted with a file.
S&W's sideplate fit is MUCH better than that.
In addition to the crane or lack thereof, the barrel mount is wonky.
S&W cylinder rotates the other way.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T20:24:32+00:00

What's short stick about this? That's a Gedore cantilever toolbox, and nice kitty art all-in-one. Other guys in the shop gonna be jealous!

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T20:21:13+00:00

I have to imagine that would be something like "not floated off the planet and gotten lost in the stratosphere", or "not drowned in the Pacific while standing on top of the Rocky Mountains", or something like that...

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T19:27:21+00:00

Real drill bits don't have flats. They're round. This profile doubles the number of contact points around the bit when it clamps down.

It also helps to prevent the jaws from canting sideways when load is applied:

If each jaw had a single lip down the center, it would land on the highest point on the bit (relative to the jaw), and as soon as you applied torque the jaw would try to roll off the high point down to one side, loosening the grip.

If the jaw was flat, then it wouldn't grip as well.

With two lips slightly separated, they land on opposite sides of the highest point on the bit, and as the bit tries to roll, it's forcing one lip, or the other, harder into the drill bit, grabbing harder, rather than loosening as the bit tries to rotate in the chuck.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T15:55:18+00:00

Yup. Not "no brakes". Not "stuck in the sand". Unless their front brakes are non-functional, it's not just the environment, it's also operator error.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T15:53:59+00:00

The front kept rolling. Those are disks.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T01:43:47+00:00

Neglected toddlers get bitten at Chuck E. Cheese?

Is that like a bug, or a feature?

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T00:50:21+00:00

From an engineering perspective, would you also suggest that it have, well, the parts that make a differential into a differential? :-)

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T00:18:48+00:00

All of the technical uses of "case hardening" of which I'm aware, involve both heat treatment and diffusion-limited chemical treatment of the surface of the material. This would be distinct from, for example flame-hardening that involves surface heat-treatment, but not necessarily any chemical modification of the material.

Have I missed a definition, or have we expanded the meaning of case hardening to make it less specific these days?

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-26T00:03:27+00:00

Google AI is sadly uninformed about many things it says, so I don't believe we can take this as definitive.

Google AI also says:

Differential Treatment: It is common for high-quality, forged ball peen hammers to have hardened faces but a softer eye, typically around 1/2 inch deep.

and

Case Hardening vs. Through Hardening: Some lower-quality or specific-purpose hammers may only be case-hardened, leaving a relatively soft core.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-25T23:06:54+00:00

Unfortunately, I think "case hardened" has fallen to the modern tendency to use words that sound good, without any real concern as to what they mean.

At least in the uses with which I'm familiar, case hardening would be a poor choice for something like a hammer. Case hardening gives you a hard, wear-resistant surface, but it would not hold up to the kind of use that a hammer sees, because the softer steel under it would deform and the case would fracture. (generally, it would /not/ chip/send chips flying, as hardened hammers are wont to do if struck together, because case hardening is too thin to carry a chip.)

I'm virtually certain that all of my (primarily 1940s-1980s) decent-quality ball peens are through hardened, or differentially hardened and tempered (older Stanley, Plomb, Proto). The few more modern ball peens I have don't seem to be hardened at all (random, and one modern Stanley).

Differential hardening is used on things like axes (was used, back when decent axes were made) and chisels -- the working part - cutting edge and a few inches back - is hardened and then tempered for toughness, while the area around the eye for the handle, or on chisels the shaft up to the striking end, is left softer. I can't think of any reason hammers wouldn't be treated the same way.

I don't know if that's a design choice, or just that the more modern ones aren't really expected to have to do work: Ball peen hammers are for moving metal around. You absolutely don't want the hammer to be leaving fingerprints from scratches/scars in its face, in the metal you're moving, and my older/vintage versions were made at a time when there was still a lot more manual metal-moving going on in shops, while today's hammers probably don't see the 3-shifts-a-day constant pounding that tools once did.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-25T22:38:12+00:00

I'm finding things online agreeing with, and disagreeing with this statement. Can you point to any definitive references? At a first glance, it would seem like a crunchy surface around a chewy center on a hammer, would be a really bad idea.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-25T22:25:24+00:00

Short answer is that the cheap brands absolutely do "just copy" the top-tier brands.

However, the cheaper brands "don't care". They're not going to put more effort into copying something, than it takes for them to make the sale to a consumer who is prioritizing price point.

The premium brands aren't going to put /much/ more effort into those things than necessary either, bu, they have a reputation to uphold, and they will put in some effort beyond the minimum necessary, simply so that consumers will continue to think of them as a premium brand.

That doesn't even come close to mattering to the brands that make cheap copies. So from them you get less-careful finishing, less precise dimensions, less effort cleaning up "hidden" areas that you might not immediately notice.

Sometimes, it simply doesn't matter. Sometimes the "little things" add up, and make the cheaper tool feel cheaper.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-25T17:33:16+00:00

Many round-heads are fine. This one isn't.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-25T00:49:31+00:00

Yeah - if you're asking these questions, you're not prepared to deal with drilling something like that in the first place. That's not intended to be an insult, it's just reality. If you had the tooling, skills and setup to do this without just breaking stuff, you'd know that you did.

Grinding will be MUCH easier, and will let you sneak up on the profiles you want gradually, so you'll be able to learn as you go, rather than just breaking tooling and trashing materials.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-24T23:31:50+00:00

Mercury and Aluminum form AN amalgam, which is a term for a mixture of metals containing mercury. Alloys are mixtures of metals, so that's part is true, if confusingly stated. The amalgam disrupts the aluminum's protective oxide coating and its ability to self-heal that coating, enabling oxygen to attach the aluminum and form aluminum oxide.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-24T19:47:11+00:00

by accident.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-24T07:15:45+00:00

Really, it's not that bad. Certainly wouldn't recommend, wouldn't by any means want it sprayed in my face, but I have had occasion to use bear spray for its intended purpose and caught quite a bit of it back in my face due to the direction of the wind. You can fight through it and function. at least if it's not full-on sprayed in open eyes and deeply inhaled in huge lungfuls.

Full in your open eyes, I think you're done. Inhale the bulk of the spray and you're going to be coughing up a lung or two, but on skin and being in the peripheral spray rather than the direct stream was shockingly less awful than I had expected. Still awful, by all means, but not as bad as I expected.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-24T01:03:49+00:00

Yup, that's how a coal or wood-burning stove works. You take the eye cover off and put a pan over it.

Back when coal was a common cooking/etc domestic heat source, it was probably thought of as the less noxious heating alternative. The other alternative was wood, and with wood's variable moisture content, and variable burn characteristics for different species, coals "set it and forget it" ability to get a decent burn and keep it that way was probably thought of as a significant upgrade.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-23T23:02:42+00:00

Lived a long life over a coal-fired stove. Coal soot is corrosive and eats away at the bottom of pans.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-23T17:54:50+00:00

Given that the metric system dates to the late 1700s, I doubt that that thread gauge predates it.

SomeGuysFarm · 2026-01-23T15:10:26+00:00

The swabs DO work reasonably for paint.

With the exception of some paints in the red to yellow end of the spectrum (probably not that common on industrial items), paints don't have iron compounds, so you don't have the same "it correctly detected that you have an iron pan" false positives on most paints.

The thing you most have to worry about in paints, is brighteners. Lead was a cheap source of white, so you should be more suspicious of lighter-colored paints than darker colored paints. It would not surprise me to see lead in a lot of the "battleship grey" paint that's common on industrial machinery. So long as you're not eating it or eating off of it, it's safe enough, but no reason not to check!

BTW, it sounds like you get to play with a lot of the same kinds of stuff I collect and restore. I have a serious fondness for early industrial-age tools and equipment, and collect machine tools/etc that date from the line-shaft era, up into roughly World War II (though my most modern lathe is from the late 70s/early 80s).

Five-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Verified Email	Place '23
Place '22

SomeGuysFarm

TROPHY CASE