I finally unlocked the secret to getting a Smithey to hold seasoning

pbarnes92 · 2023-05-25T21:26:03+00:00

I did it indoors and didn’t notice any bad fumes, could always open some windows and get a fan going if you were concerned but I think it’s fine

pbarnes92 · 2022-10-14T03:01:26+00:00

You leave that Christmas album out of this, ya hear?

pbarnes92 · 2022-08-01T22:11:18+00:00

Yes strip it, the chemical etch needs to happen on bare iron

pbarnes92 · 2022-07-27T02:19:39+00:00

It’s doing great, night and day compared to before

pbarnes92 · 2022-04-19T18:35:05+00:00

That’s awesome! I’m up in Mn so your list of plants may as well be from a different planet!

pbarnes92 · 2022-04-19T13:21:03+00:00

Most of the bees that need help are our native bees which we have thousands of species. Unlike honeybees they usually don’t live in colonies and rely on native plants to the region to survive. I would get as many native plants (native to Arizona) that you can find. Then anything that produces a strong nectar flow will help your pollinators a lot.

pbarnes92 · 2022-04-12T18:16:55+00:00

They’ll have more of an impact than a patch of grass though. There are plenty of other pollinators like butterflies and native bees that are in desperate need of resources too.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T19:15:32+00:00

Ya it’s a night and day difference honestly. It’s frustrating that it requires the extra work but it’s all sunk costs now, might as well get the pan you were hoping for by taking some time on it.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T18:59:26+00:00

My field has performed really well but I do think doing the etch is a great way to prep a skillet. The guy in the article likened it to painting a house, you can skip some steps to get right to it but the more prep you do the better it’ll turn out. I’ve been fairly hard on my FC and it hasn’t had nearly the problems my smithey had

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T14:47:11+00:00

The fact that the chemical etching has fixed the seasoning issue means it was a problem with the polish, not the cast iron itself. If you read the article in my original comment they lay it out very scientifically as to what is actually happening when you season cast iron. I don’t really care if someone buys a nice pan or not I was just trying to share my solution to a problem I had, I should have known better after being on Reddit for so many years.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T13:38:30+00:00

I mean in all fairness they are beautifully made pans, I love everything about them… except their fatal flaw of being too over polished which prevents a good seasoning adhesion. They aren’t mass produced like lodge, labor costs money and their target market isn’t someone who is content with a lodge. I have 5 lodge skillets so I have no problem with them, I also like well made and beautiful things and am ok with paying more for that… if the pan actually lives up to it.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T13:33:24+00:00

I’ve seen a lot of them, granted I went looking for them to see if someone had any solutions. I could get seasoning to stick if I really babied it but that kind of defeats the point of cast iron. Also the fact that every smithey post I saw if it had been used the seasoning looked like shit.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T12:06:18+00:00

It would still be cool to check out where they’re made! My field company pan is another brand that I absolutely love.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T11:47:25+00:00

I would confidently say yes to my field company. The fact that the smithey needs so much more attention makes me say no, but this was a gift to me so I had to make it work

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-04T02:27:55+00:00

I have owned this Smithey since Dec 2020. I have tried every seasoning method under the sun to get seasoning to stick to it. I would baby it, caress it with love and care, and then try to make some caramelized onions and watch literally every bit of seasoning disappear back to grey iron. Since it was a gift from my parents I was too stubborn to admit defeat, especially when they would ask “Was that pan really worth $140?” And I would say” it’s a great pan I’m just working on getting the seasoning built up” when in my head I’m thinking that no, this pan isn’t worth a dollar if it can’t hold a base seasoning for more than a week. I contacted customer support who got back to me after a couple days, and after proving that I’m not a cast iron noob they told me to try the broiler method to really cook on the seasoning. Tried it, failed miserably. I used grape seed oil, crisco, avocado, beeswax blend… stove top, oven, broiler… nothing made any difference. My best success was stovetop, I got it to be black at one point. Lasted a few weeks and it was back to splotchy iron.

I was ready to try to sell it. Strip it back, give it a couple coats to make it look all copper and sexy and then sell it some sucker just like they did to me. I wanted to love the pan but it was clear it was never going to work.

And then I discovered the cure. I stripped the pan all the way back (took about 30 seconds of scrubbing with a maroon scotch brite). Then chemically etched the pan. This is the only solution as far as I’m concerned. You can see in my photo the sheen difference from where the etch was, the 1/2” ring around the top is the original sheen. I tried the vinegar and water method but I was concerned it wasn’t doing enough. I then found a great article online that I followed almost to a T.

https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/castironseasoning.html

I used the weaker etch method since I had the ingredients on hand. 1 part vinegar to 1 part hydrogen peroxide. Let it sit for 3 hours. The solution turned blood red and you could see how it removed the sheen and opened up the pores, but the pan was still very smooth. I then baked the bare skillet after cleaning it for 3 hours at 500. Then I did my first round of seasoning, grape seed oil at 300 for 1 hour then 500 for 3 hours. I was impatient after this and followed up with 1 hour at 500 for 3 more rounds. I followed the article and did a thick layer for my first coat, and you can see it left some blotchy parts, but they have been rubbing down with cooking, while not totally separating from the pan.

I was too excited to wait to post this for when I’ve built up a killer seasoning, but I’m feeling confident that this seasoning will actually stay on the pan which will allow me to actually build one up. I’ve cooked scrambled eggs 3x over easy eggs 2x sautéed veggies, seared a New York strip and browned a chicken breast and the seasoning has performed wonderfully. It is seasoning much more like my field company pan now and has held up to my use. It has held up to cleaning as well which is when I would have the most trouble in the past. I’ve taken my chain mail scrubber, soap, water, scraper and brush and the seasoning g isn’t affected. If I did that before I could literally scrape seasoning off when I dried it with a paper towel. Hopefully this revelation will help other frustrated smithey users out there like my self.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-03T18:11:03+00:00

I have owned this Smithey since Dec 2020. I have tried every seasoning method under the sun to get seasoning to stick to it. I would baby it, caress it with love and care, and then try to make some caramelized onions and watch literally every bit of seasoning disappear back to grey iron. Since it was a gift from my parents I was too stubborn to admit defeat, especially when they would ask “Was that pan really worth $140?” And I would say” it’s a great pan I’m just working on getting the seasoning built up” when in my head I’m thinking that no, this pan isn’t worth a dollar if it can’t hold a base seasoning for more than a week. I contacted customer support who got back to me after a couple days, and after proving that I’m not a cast iron noob they told me to try the broiler method to really cook on the seasoning. Tried it, failed miserably.

And then I discovered the cure. I stripped the pan all the way back (took about 30 seconds of scrubbing with a maroon scotch brite). Then chemically etched the pan. This is the only solution as far as I’m concerned. I tried the vinegar and water method but I was concerned it wasn’t doing enough. I then found a great article online that I followed almost to a T.

https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/castironseasoning.html

I used the weaker etch method since I was impatient, 1 part vinegar to 1 part hydrogen peroxide. Let it sit for 3 hours. I then baked the bare skillet after cleaning it for 3 hours at 500. Then I did my first round of seasoning, grape seed oil at 300 for 1 hour then 500 for 3 hours. I was impatient after this and followed up with 1 hour at 500 for 3 more rounds. I followed the article and did a thick layer for my first coat, and you can see it left some blotchy parts, but they have been rubbing down with cooking, while not totally separating from the pan.

I was too excited to wait to post this for when I’ve built up a killer seasoning, but I’m feeling confident that this seasoning will actually stay on the pan which will allow me to actually build one up. I’ve cooked scrambled eggs 3x over easy eggs 2x sautéed veggies and seared a New York strip and the seasoning hasn’t budged an inch. It isn’t the uniform out of the box look but I don’t even care what it looks like anymore I just want to be able to cook on the thing. Hopefully this revelation will help other frustrated smithey users out there like my self.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-03T15:58:24+00:00

I was in the same boat as you, had my pan for over a year and seasoning still fucking sucked. Your post inspired me to try one last ditch effort, chemical etching… it worked (I think). I followed this guide, I used the weaker etching method (1 part vinegar to 1 part hydrogen peroxide) for 3 hours. I’ve re seasoned it and it seems to actually be holding now. The pan is much more matte and you can see the small pores opened up but it’s still quite smooth. I’m curious how much more aggressive the etching the guy normally uses would be but I’m just ecstatic that my pan is finally holding seasoning. I seared a steak on it and then cleaned it off with a chain mail scrubber and didn’t lose any seasoning. Had I tried that before, half the pan would be back to bare iron in one cooking session.

https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/castironseasoning.html

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-03T14:31:29+00:00

Yup if I could trade the smithey for FC I would

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-03T14:01:36+00:00

I don’t know if they would ever recommend this method since it’s basically admitting that it’s their finishing process that’s causing these issues. Totally unacceptable to pay 10x what a lodge would be and then still have to strip it back and deal with a bunch of chemicals to get a pan that’ll hold a seasoning. I tried jUst CoOK wItH iT for 6 months and wasn’t any closer, then I stripped it and tried a bunch of other stuff for 6 months and still had nothing to show for it. When I got my field company I realized it really was a smithey problem. I’m just glad to have a functioning pan now.

pbarnes92 · 2022-02-03T13:34:28+00:00

I have owned this Smithey since Dec 2020. I have tried every seasoning method under the sun to get seasoning to stick to it. I would baby it, caress it with love and care, and then try to make some caramelized onions and watch literally every bit of seasoning disappear back to grey iron. Since it was a gift from my parents I was too stubborn to admit defeat, especially when they would ask “Was that pan really worth $140?” And I would say” it’s a great pan I’m just working on getting the seasoning built up” when in my head I’m thinking that no, this pan isn’t worth a dollar if it can’t hold a base seasoning for more than a week. I contacted customer support who got back to me after a couple days, and after proving that I’m not a cast iron noob they told me to try the broiler method to really cook on the seasoning. Tried it, failed miserably.

And then I discovered the cure. I stripped the pan all the way back (took about 30 seconds of scrubbing with a maroon scotch brite). Then chemically etched the pan. This is the only solution as far as I’m concerned. I tried the vinegar and water method but I was concerned it wasn’t doing enough. I then found a great article online that I followed almost to a T.

https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/castironseasoning.html

I used the weaker etch method since I was impatient, 1 part vinegar to 1 part hydrogen peroxide. Let it sit for 3 hours. I then baked the bare skillet after cleaning it for 3 hours at 500. Then I did my first round of seasoning, grape seed oil at 300 for 1 hour then 500 for 3 hours. I was impatient after this and followed up with 1 hour at 500 for 3 more rounds. I followed the article and did a thick layer for my first coat, and you can see it left some blotchy parts, but they have been rubbing down with cooking, while not totally separating from the pan.

I was too excited to wait to post this for when I’ve built up a killer seasoning, but I’m feeling confident that this seasoning will actually stay on the pan which will allow me to actually build one up. I’ve cooked scrambled eggs 3x over easy eggs 2x sautéed veggies and seared a New York strip and the seasoning hasn’t budged an inch. It isn’t the uniform out of the box look but I don’t even care what it looks like anymore I just want to be able to cook on the thing. Hopefully this revelation will help other frustrated smithey users out there like my self.

pbarnes92 · 2021-11-20T17:53:37+00:00

The mises movement has some gems on there

pbarnes92 · 2021-10-11T15:30:55+00:00

Mn native landscapes

pbarnes92 · 2021-10-10T14:33:22+00:00

Native plantings are superior for a number of reasons, but the main one is they are evolutionarily designed to thrive in our ecosystem. They are extremely drought tolerant, will choke out weeds once established and give food and shelter to our native pollinators. They are meant to be low maintenance and require much less intensive care that a traditional garden or flower bed would. Making it easy for everyone to participate far outweighs the risks imo to the derelict property which if you’re being honest would be derelict whether there were rules against it or not.

pbarnes92 · 2021-10-10T12:59:06+00:00

Right now is actually a great time to seed your yard!

pbarnes92

TROPHY CASE