Restore That Old Rusty Cast Iron Skillet

This post will be an explanation of one way to restore a cast iron skillet. I have read a boat load about it and decided to try this method. It seems to work Just fine. There are a few reasons for wanting to "restart" a pan and in this case it was to get rid of rust, as well as to make sure we were cooking on a vegan friendly surface. Jess and I bought a van, and the previous owner decided to leave a set of three Wagner cast irons inside for us to take on our journey's. They were fairly neglected and half a year later I have finally got around to this project. Ok....Here we go!

What you will need.

• An oven.(If you have an oven with a "self cleaning" setting or any oven that can reach high temperatures that should work. In this case I used an earthen "Cob" oven we have in our yard. a fire pit may work as well.)
• A few clean rags or small towels.
• Cooking oil or shortening (I used olive oil)
• Sand paper (Some rough and some finer)
• The will.

Here is what the skillet looked like before.

 Before firing up the oven I sat the pan on a couple of bricks.

 Then I built a fire. The idea is to get the oven very hot, so I kept stoking it until I had plenty of hot coals to surround the pan.

 This is about an hour or more in. It was at this point I could see the old seasoning flaking away. That made me happy.

 After The oven was at max temperature I closed the door. I let it cook and cool down completely inside. The next morning I pulled it out and it looked like this. All of the old seasoning had turned to ash. Next I wiped it out with a dry cloth to remove the carbon and ash. Gave it a sand by hand, starting with the rough and finishing with the smooth. this step took about 10-15 minutes. Easy.

 This was the result. I wiped it out with another dry cloth to remove any more dust before oiling. It is import to remember after it is down to the raw iron you must oil it as soon as you can to prevent any rust forming. Notice there was no water used in this process.

 Then I took some olive oil on a cloth and wiped in into the pan inside and out.After that I threw it in my kitchen oven for an hour at 300 degrees to set the first layer of seasoning. It is ready for use. Their are plenty of videos out there about seasoning cast irons, I find using them every day works best. If anybody out there has some tips or advice on restoring these things please comment.
Happy cooking.