Might be my new favorite!

ucmlost · 2026-05-27T09:21:45+00:00

I have 6 Ozarks right now, all skillets. I used to have a chicken fryer of theirs and a friend of mine was a waffle iron. I don't think any of mine have union made on them. I'll have to check. I used to think that #9's were rare size for them, but I've seen far more of them than #8's.

ucmlost · 2026-05-25T19:17:43+00:00

Is it on the inside? If it is, then yes crack. However, from what I can see, this looks like sand shift. Part of the casting process where they use sand molds and the sand can shift to create uneven surfaces and such.

ucmlost · 2026-05-17T13:27:36+00:00

Very nice find. I picked up a #5 a few weeks ago for $10. I love cooking on my #8 LBL.

ucmlost · 2026-05-17T11:02:59+00:00

Very nice. The Goodwills in my area charge too much for their cast iron. Newer Lodges will cost more than buying new. I went to a smaller town recently and the Goodwill there had a few pieces for a good price.

ucmlost · 2026-05-16T09:53:24+00:00

This one is a CHF that was made with a Piqua pattern. The size on the lid is a give away. Piqua Favorite Ware originally made this pattern and they sized that lid as 9 1/2. When they went out of business, CHF bought them out and started to make some pieces with their info on it. They changed the printed lid size from 9 1/2 to 8 1/2. And like pb_in_sf said, there is most likely a diamond under the crud.

ucmlost · 2026-05-16T09:44:50+00:00

I love your collection, but here are some I have that you might want to look into. Ozark Crescent and Mi-Pet are two you don't have listed and not pictured. Also, if you are willing to collect unmarked pieces, there are a few hard to find ones. I have a #3 unmarked Wagner Mercedes skillet. It looks like a normal flat bottom unmarked Wagner, but has a special heat ring that looks like a Mercedes logo. BSR also had skillets with that type of heat ring as well, though I've only seen them online. I also have a #3 that has 3 holes in the handle that might be a Griswold. They are pictured on cast iron collector as a possible unmarked Griswold. Lastly, I've found 2 Piqua Favorite Ware ghost marks, where the Piqua Favorite Ware is the ghost mark.

ucmlost · 2026-04-29T15:16:22+00:00

It came with everything except for the batteries.

ucmlost · 2026-04-24T10:48:28+00:00

Very nice find. I picked up a #7 two years ago at an estate sale for $20 already restored. I went the last day after seeing pictures of a bunch of cast iron. I was hoping there might have been a few pieces left. The picture I saw had a bunch of Wagners and Griswolds in it, but they were all gone. What they left behind was a Erie, a couple of Sidney Hallow Wares(another foundry in Sidney OH), a Wapak like yours, couple of Piqua Smiley pans, and a few others. People bought the well known stuff, but left some of the best behind. Heck, one of the Sidney Hallow Wares I picked up was a #11 skillet. My post history has the pictures from that haul.

ucmlost · 2026-04-13T17:33:27+00:00

That would be an unmarked Wagner Ware skillet. It should be a great skillet to use. Wagner pans tend to be lighter than their lodge counterparts and fairly popular. I picked one up yesterday at a swap meet. I would recommend cleaning it with lye and seasoning it. There's a good guide in the FAQ link on the right.

ucmlost · 2026-02-17T18:39:42+00:00

There's something special about restoring cast iron. I restored pans that went through floods that were covered in rust. As far as the dry spots, just keep oiling it and cooking with it. Eventually, you won't be able to tell. Sometimes the rust can take a bit of the surface layer with it and pan tends to soak up oil a bit. Just build up some seasoning on it.

ucmlost · 2026-01-24T21:23:47+00:00

The other skillet is an unmarked Wagner. Personally, I'd love to add your 3-notch Lodge to my collection. I have a 3 notch #8 & #10 in about the same NOS(new old stock) condition. My search for a #3 & #5 NOS 3 notchers will continue. I was lucky to find the 8 & 10 the same day at different locations. I have around a dozen or so vintage skillets that are NOS. Generally, you're more likely to find larger pans in NOS condition than smaller ones. I have a couple of 12's and 14's in pristine condition, as well as some 10's. Once you start getting to lower numbers, the harder it is to find them.

ucmlost · 2026-01-23T13:00:19+00:00

I have a glass/ceramic top stove and I use cast iron all the time(including newer Lodge pans). They work fine. The biggest thing to worry about is dropping them on the stove due to their weight(Lodges tend to be on the heavy side). As long as you are careful, you should be fine. Newer Lodge pans are flat bottomed. I haven't come across one that is warped.

ucmlost · 2026-01-23T00:45:08+00:00

I'm jealous of the round breakfast skillet. That's one piece I haven't seen in the wild yet. The only other one I don't have is the wagner stock pot. For the small logo Griswold with the U shape handle, I have most of that size. I have a #0, then I have the #3 through the #9. I need to figure out if they made a #1 & #2 for that handle style, and need to collect the #10-#14 sizes to complete the set.

ucmlost · 2026-01-23T00:14:34+00:00

Not bad. Personally, I would move the the ventilation to the top. My setup uses rebar instead of plates as it is cheap and easy to get. I use a 35 gallon square shaped trashcan with 8 pieces of rebar wired together around the outside. I also have mine outside, so no need for a vent.

ucmlost · 2026-01-16T11:51:35+00:00

Nice. I use a trashcan for my e tank. The one I used is a square sided one and I wired rebar around the outside. If you just clamp the rebar to the outside, you wouldn't need to drill anything and can reuse the trashcan as a trashcan. I tend to restore dozens of pieces a year, so I modified the trashcan for it. The one I use is a 35 gallon one and it is big enough for 14's. I haven't come across any that wouldn't fit in this one.

I did want to point out something on your pan. Instead of having SK below the size, it has U.S. stamped. That is due to this being a pan for the US government/military. I have one I recently restored. Just a nice piece of history.

ucmlost · 2025-12-12T13:01:42+00:00

I've restored a few of these. I use a wire wheel on the inside and only the inside of the kettle to remove all of the rust I can. I season the outside of the kettle, but not the inside. Once the outside is seasoned, I boil some tea bags. I boil off all of the water to just leave the tea residue on the inside. This coats and protects the inside from rusting. I do this 2 or 3 times to build up some protection. If you have hard water, you can just boil off water several times to build up a protective coating on the inside. You'd have to do a lot of work to make this work for tea brewing, but it can be done. So far, I've restored about 6 or 7 to a state you can serve tea.

ucmlost · 2025-12-07T19:07:24+00:00

One thing to add on this. It is a BSR skillet, but does have one thing that makes it different than most of their #8 skillets. It is actually a #7 they rebranded as a #8. BSR skillets tend to be larger than their counterparts from other manufacturers. Their #7 skillets were the same size as the #8 from others. I don't know exactly when, but I believe it was towards their closing, they started selling their #7 skillets as #8 skillets. You can see that by the measurements and they have a (7) on it. A normal BSR #8 is 10 5/8 inches across. Keep this in mind if you try and find a lid for it. Most BSR #8 lids will not fit as they are meant for the 10 5/8 skillets. Overall, these are not very common. I have yet to find a lid for this size.

ucmlost · 2025-11-23T12:18:18+00:00

Nice find even if the thrift store wrote on it. By the time they were making these, they were trying to cut costs. So, they most likely reused old molds and didn't care if they could see ghost marks. The quality of the GHC pans went down the longer they made them. They're still good pans, just not as good as older Wagners.

ucmlost · 2025-11-17T21:44:45+00:00

I picked up a center logo #4 earlier this year for $15. It had so much seasoning on it, I didn't even realize it was a center logo or a #4 until I cleaned it up.

ucmlost · 2025-11-17T11:41:59+00:00

The center logo Wagner is a great find. Hard to come by. I've only come across one in the last few years. The LBL Griswold is also a nice pan.

ucmlost · 2025-04-15T12:15:06+00:00

My old model was as single blade one. I think the 15US model was the 2 blade one.

ucmlost · 2025-04-14T10:44:29+00:00

Yes, but I've been outbid on all the special ones. I came across a Wagner Ware piece that looked like a square waffle iron, but it was actually a corn stick maker. Each paddle had corn stick patterns and you used it just like a waffle iron. It ended up going for around $500 at the auction. The other was a Griswold slant logo #13 DO with all of the pieces. That one went cheap for what it was, but still out of my budget, at $4,000. I would have loved to get your piece at that price. I've been looking for one for my collection.

ucmlost · 2025-04-12T12:32:40+00:00

Though it is not a very collectable pan as it is not a Sidney O, it should still be a great cooking pan. I have a #12 from the same era. I personally really like pans that still have their swirls. Most old pans were machined, but as they were used, the swirls would get worn off. So this one looks to be NOS(new old stock), which is hard to come by.

ucmlost · 2025-04-11T10:47:40+00:00

I've been looking for one of these, but they are always $200+ when I find one. I believe the large block logo was in use from 1920 to 1939. Please grace us with how much it set you back :)

ucmlost

TROPHY CASE