I restored some old cast iron (pics)

Wasn't sure if this would fit better on this board, the OB, or even the food board. But anyway, here goes:

I found an old cast iron pot at my grandpa's that was eaten up with rust and gunk. It's nothing fancy, but I decided to try my hand at restoring it. Did some googling and decided that an electrolysis bath would be the best treatment considering anything else might destroy it with as much rust as it had.

Before:



A ton of mystery gunk on the bottom of the pot

Underside of the lid

I ordered a workbench power supply from Amazon, grabbed a piece of scrap rebar, and went to work. This is what the setup looked like:


And after a few hours of running it:


I only had half of the pot submerged at a time so I'd have somewhere to directly attach the alligator clip. After I think 18 hours, you can tell which half of the pot was in the bath here:



And after about 3 days of electrolysis (alternating sides and pot + lid), scrubbing with Barkeeper's Friend, and one coat of oil, these are the results:

Bottom of the pot (before I seasoned it)


You can see some pitting in the pot but it's not a huge deal. Shameful seasoning job, but we all start somewhere


I'm far from an expert so this probably isn't the best it could be, but it's a lot better than it was. I'll hit it with a few more rounds of seasoning then fry up a big ole batch of chicken in it.